
COPXRIGHT DEPOSm 



•58p (Btovst |). Palmer 



THE ENGLISH POEMS OF GEORGE HERBERT. 
With frontispiece. Edited by George H. Palmer. 

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY IN THE SON- 
NETS OF SHAKSPERE. Ingersbll Lecture. 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 

THE TEACHER AND OTHER ESSAYS AND AD- 
DRESSES ON EDUCATION. By George H. Palmer 
and Alice Freeman Palmer. 

THE LIFE OF ALICE FREEMAN PALMER. With 
Portraits and Views. Ne^v Edition. 

THE ENGLISH WORKS OF GEORGE HERBERT. 
Newly arranged and annotated, and considered in rela- 
tion to his life, by G. H. Palmer. Second Edition. In 
3 volumes. Illustrated. 

THE NATURE OF GOODNESS. 

THE FIELD OF ETHICS. 

THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER. Books I-XII. The 
Text and an English Prose Version. 

THE ODYSSEY. Complete. An English Translation 
in Prose. 

THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. Translated into 
English. With an Introduction. 

A SERVICE IN MEMORY OF ALICE FREEMAN 
PALMER. Edited by George H. Palmer. With Ad- 
dresses by James B. Angell, Caroline Hazard, W. J. 
Tucker, and Charles W. Eliot. With Portraits. 

FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY. 

A MARRIAGE CYCLE. By Alice Freeman Palmer. 
Edited by George H. Palmer. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 



FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 



FORMATIVE TYPES 
IN ENGLISH POETRY 

TEE EARL LECTURES 
OF 1917 

BY 
GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1918 






^^^ 



COPYRIGHT, I918, BY GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published November, iqiB 



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'SO 



NOV 20 1918 



©Ci.A5i)K65a 



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I 



PREFACE 

The substance of this book was delivered as 
a series of lectures on the Earl Foundation be- 
fore the Pacific Theological Seminary in Berke- 
ley, California, during the spring of 1917. The 
subject was one which had long interested me. 
I had spoken on it before the Lowell Institute 
in Boston in 1913 and subsequently on several 
occasions had found for it eager auditors and 
critics among college students. This frequent 
traversing of the same ground has helped me 
to perceive more plainly the path to be fol- 
lowed and has controlled the inclination to 
turn to this side or that in search of better 
prospects. 

My aim is a narrow one. The book is not a 
history of Enghsh poetry, not even an outhne. 
At only half a dozen periods in the long and 
magnificent course of that poetry do I examine 
it, those periods being separated by intervals 
widely dissimilar and occupied by poets not 
always of the first rank. Some of the greatest 
names in our literature are not touched at all. 
The drama is omitted altogether; and I have 



vi PREFACE 

not inquired how far changes in prose writing 
attended those traced here in poetry. Even my 
seven chosen torch-bearers I have dealt with 
very imperfectly, turning to them only for the 
light they throw on the connected march of 
mind. 

In my judgment the English understanding 
of poetry has unfolded itself slowly, passing 
through certain well-marked crises or epochs 
at each of which has stood a revolter from past 
practice who, setting up antagonistic, yet really 
supplemental, conceptions of poetry has thrown 
open tracts of emotion which our beautiful art 
had not previously touched. Of course minor 
changes of this sort occur continually. I have 
wished to fix attention on the half-dozen fun- 
damental, logical and productive crises which 
have brought us the rich poetry we now possess 
and may yet bring us richer still. 

There are dangers in such an undertaking. 
No important change comes about without 
long preparation, however great the genius 
who finally perceives its significance and gives 
it recognizable form. So condensed an account 
as mine is apt to make history appear a thing 
of leaps and bounds, as if settled practice sud- 
denly gave way to novelty. But I have thought 



PREFACE vii 

this danger worth incurring if I could so bring 
out more clearly the type toward which many 
tendencies converged and present it embodied 
in him who first fully comprehended it. 

I am sorry, too, that my plan obliges me 
to pass by many important writers whom one 
might naturally expect to find here. Where, 
for example, are Sidney and Shakspere with 
their sonnets, where Herrick, Marvell, Dryden, 
Gray, Byron, Keats, Shelley — superb poets all 
— preeminent, many readers will think, above 
several I have chosen? But they were not 
types. While all subsequent verse undoubt- 
edly shows their influence, they did not estab- 
lish a crisis and form a turning-point. More 
plausibly may it be objected that there is no 
such epochal separation between Tennyson 
and Browning as between the earlier mem- 
bers of my group. In justification I would 
plead that two great poets living so near us, 
and with whose writings we are so familiar, 
offer an exceptional opportunity for studying 
minutely and in less emphasized form the 
whole conception of a type. 

For one huge omission, however, I have little 
excuse beside incompetence. Milton was too 
big for me. I reverence him beyond any other 



viii PREFACE 

inventor of harmonies and feel that without 
eyes he saw more deeply into beauty than any 
of our other poets have seen with them. But 
on that account I did not think I could ex- 
pound him in any such space as was at my 
disposal. And, after all, was not Wordsworth 
right in thinking him solitary as a star.f^ In a 
group he is out of scale. No doubt all the world 
was changed as soon as Milton wrote. But 
he left no school. Men opened their eyes and 
ears, wondered and were glad. But the wise 
ones went on their own way, and only the 
little ones imitated. He showed no path for 
others to follow. None but a Milton walks 
steadily there. 

In dealing with individual poets my method 
is somewhat peculiar. I attempt to criticize 
from within out, not, as is more usual, from 
without in. That is, after gaining pretty full 
acquaintance with a poet I am apt to discover 
in him some central principle from which most 
of his peculiarities radiate. To seize this cen- 
tral type or interest and through it to give a 
unitary view of the man seems to me the true 
aim of criticism. One may easily press the 
method too far and thus regard complexity and 
discord too little. Few of us are completely 



PREFACE ix 

harmonized. Yet p>oets tend toward harmony 
about in proportion to their greatness, and in 
this book none but great men appear. I shall 
not distort them if I show each as moving from 
something hke a single centre. 

At the close of each of these lectures, as origi- 
nally delivered, I read for half an hour from 
the poet discussed. Criticism, taken apart from 
that which is discussed, is arid and blinding 
stuff. I accordingly at first thought of printing 
after each lecture a selection of "illustration 
material." But seeing that this would double 
the size of my book, and possibly render it less 
attractive to those who found there poetry 
already pretty familiar, I abandoned the plan 
and have substituted brief lists, sufficient, how- 
ever, to enable the novice to bring my judg- 
ments to the test. 

Perhaps a word of apology is needed for here 
venturing outside my province. My profes- 
sional work has been in Philosophy. To the 
poets I have listened only as an amateur. Yet 
every one is wise, whatever his occupation, in 
cherishing some collateral interest which pro- 
duces nothing for the market, is amenable to 
no social standard, and is valued simply for 
sweetening his own life. Such an unpaid in- 



X PREFACE 

vigorator has poetry been to me during a long 
life. On nearing the close I am glad to give it 
publicity and commend it as a privy councillor 
to others. 

Harvard University 
August 1, 1918 



CONTENTS 

I. Introductory 1 

II. Geoffrey Chaucer 31 

III. Edmund Spenser 63 

IV. George Herbert 99 

V. Alexander Pope 135 

VI. William Wordsworth .... 181 

VII. Alfred Tennyson 223 

VIII. Robert Browning 271 



FORMATIVE TYPES 
IN ENGLISH POETRY 

I 

Introductory 



FORMATIVE TYPES 
IN ENGLISH POETRY 

I 

INTRODUCTORY 

What is poetry? What its function? Where 
run the bounds which part it from other varie- 
ties of human expression? Why have certain 
special forms of rhythmic utterance been gen- 
erally thought necessary for conveying emo- 
tional appeal? What value has that appeal? 
Why do many persons on reaching maturity 
persistently neglect poetry while others tumult- 
uously acclaim it? Perhaps poetry, like human 
reason itself, is too deeply entwined with the 
roots of our being to be detached, inspected, 
and separately defined. Certainly critics 
equally competent have given widely dififerent 
answers to the questions here proposed. I shall 
not attempt to settle their contentions. On 
the contrary, I am more anxious to stir my 
reader into thought, inconsistent thought, 
about these beautiful mysteries than to ease 
him with plausible solutions. Yet certain 



4 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

dominant conceptions about the substance, 
form, and importance of poetry so shape the 
discussions of this book that it seems only fair 
to state them plainly in an introductory chap- 
ter and thus enable the reader as we proceed 
to reject or accept the evidence adduced. 

Our first business will be a negative clearing 
of the ground. Certain misconceptions must 
be disposed of. So soon as we have determined 
what poetry is not, we shall be in better condi- 
tion for understanding what it essentially is. 

Poetry is commonly identified with verse 
and contrasted with prose. But on reflection 
few will persist in the error; for a large body of 
tolerable verse has no poetic quality. Nothing 
in its substance requires the verse form. For 
effecting any purpose it might as well have 
been written in prose. Verse however conveys 
to the ear a peculiar pleasure; and when there 
is nothing else to be conveyed, the writer who 
drops that drops all. Verse, therefore, always 
giving us something agreeable, is peculiarly 
tempted into emptiness and needs for its justi- 
fication only occasionally to deviate into sense. 
To maintain that a succession of sweet sounds 
makes poetry is much like finding prose in a 
dozen words taken at random from the die- 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

tionary. Even if we regard rhythm and metre 
as equally essential to poetry, as words are to 
prose, they are essential merely to its structure 
and not to its substance. 

How far that substance can be detached 
from its usual outward form is an unsettled 
question. The great experimenters of the past 
— the translators of the Psalms, Nicholas 
Breton in his "Fantastickes," Milton in 
"Samson Agonistes" and in passages of his 
prose works, Traherne in his joyous outpour- 
ings, Jeremy Taylor in his sermons, Ossian in 
heroic song, Blake in mystic vision, Carlyle 
and Ruskin in social denunciation or aesthetic 
rhapsody. Whitman in democratic chant — 
have gone far, but not far enough to satisfy the 
rebellious poets of to-day. These would abolish 
metre altogether, cut their lines with scissors, 
and give us so little of rhythm as to be audible 
to few beside themselves. Personally I would 
not assert that poetry must perish under such 
conditions. I have seen instances of its sur- 
vival where the wrench has been severe. I 
merely say that poetry able to withstand such 
dislocation will call for a twofold emotional 
power. The poet has cast away aids which 
centuries have experimented to fashion. Un- 



6 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

supported by these, to hold his poetry upright 
will require a stalwart arm. But the mere 
attempts, clumsy as they usually are, testify 
to the sound feeling that poetry is larger than 
verse and should not be confused with it. 

A second misconception, and one into which 
both individuals and nations in their early 
years are certain to fall, is that poetry is 
merely an impressive means for reporting some 
incident, character, story, or wise thought. 
In reality the description of what is seen, the 
telling an interesting tale, the statement of a 
valued truth, in short any mere reproduction 
of fact is something quite apart from the busi- 
ness of poetry. Yet great poets have made this 
mistake, and many readers look for nothing 
else. Early English history was repeatedly 
written in rhymed "fourteeners," and no 
doubt history was easier to remember in this 
form. Drayton in his "Polyolbion" wrote a 
complete geographic account of England in 
verse. Sir John Davies versified human psy- 
chology in his "Nosce Teipsum"; and Phineas 
Fletcher, in his "Purple Island," human physi- 
ology. What has all this to do with poetry, 
we may well ask. Dryden composed his 
"Religio Laici" to demonstrate the iniquity 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

of the Catholic Church. And when in later life 
he himself became a Catholic, he wrote "The 
Hind and the Panther" to prove the errors of 
the English Church and the certainty of Cath- 
olic doctrine. But how unimportant for poetry 
are such matters of observation, description, 
and argument! I might be a Catholic or 
Protestant and still find much to admire in 
both of Dryden's poems; for the poetry would 
lie elsewhere than in the jdoctrine. And in the 
same way, though I cared nothing for Dray- 
ton's geography or Davies' psychology, I could 
not fail on every few pages of their books to 
come upon glorious poetic passages which are 
in marked contrast with their prosaic surround- 
ings. In each case what constitutes the main 
theme is not poetry at all and might be ex- 
pressed more neatlj^ in prose. Whatever poetry 
is there is independent of that theme. No, we 
may altogether rule out from the field of poetry 
matters of fact, or at least may count them 
collateral and subordinate, a mere framework 
for the display of costly material. - The child's 
fancy that when he is entertained by a good 
story, jinglingly told, he is enjoying poetry, 
must be abandoned. It is no exaggeration to 
say that poetry is not concerned with facts. 



8 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

We test its worth by asking if it is beautiful or 
ugly, not if it is true or false. 

There remams the gravest of all misconcep- 
tions. We are apt to think of poetry as serving 
some useful end, aiming in some way to make 
its readers better. We Americans are pecul- 
iarly liable to tliis error, so slender is our 
sesthetic sense, so swollen our practical. We 
are always asking what a thing is for. But 
poetry is not for anything except itself. It 
seeks to produce beauty and counts beauty 
its own excuse for being. Its quality should 
be judged independently of whatever moral 
principles or practical measures may chance to 
profit by it. About a third of Whittier's writ- 
ings are devoted to the denunciation of slavery, 
and they have perished with that which tliey 
chivalrously attacked. Mrs. Browning wrote 
page after page in advocacy of an alliance be- 
tween France and Italy, .and we do not read 
those pages now. Kipling has employed poetry 
to eulogize Tory imperialism; but since much 
of it is good poetry, the liberal enjoys it no less 
than the conservative. To take a case from 
America: our enjoyment of William Vaughn 
Moody's "Ode in Time of Hesitation" should 
not depend on our view of tliis country's duty 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

to the Philippines. Poetry is not dogmatic, 
nor need our poets be preachers with a mes- 
sage. We do not ask if a symphony by Bee- 
thoven is true or of good moral tendency. 
Enough that it is beautiful. 

So much for what poetry is not. Its province 
is distinct from that of observation or conduct. 
And from how large a part of human interest 
is it thus excluded! Our chief business in life 
is to become acquainted with facts and to learn 
to separate the false from the true. Most of the 
remainder is covered by conduct, those prac- 
tical activities where we discriminate right 
from wrong. Wliat remains then for the poet 
after he has cast away the cognitive intellect 
and the directing will.^ Beyond these lies the 
field of emotion, all that part of individual 
experience which is not concerned with ascer- 
taining truth or achieving ends. The feelings, 
the varying moods of the poet, are what he 
writes about. Strictly speaking, poetry has 
but a single subject, the mind of the poet. We 
readers are interested in accompanying that 
mind and in adding its emotions to our own. 
We might, then, offer a preliminary definition 
of poetry, considered from the poet's point of 
view, and call it the conscious transmission of 



10 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

an emotional experience to another imagina- 
tive mind. 

A striking bit of evidence that the real 
ground of poetry does thus lie within the poet 
himself, rather than in the facts which purport 
to be his subject, is furnished by a group of 
poems whose professed aim is objective de- 
lineation. Shakspere's "Sonnets," Spenser's 
"Astrophil," Milton's "Lycidas," Shelley's 
"Adonais," Tennyson's "In Memoriam," 
Arnold's "Thyrsis," Woodberry's "North 
Shore Watch," form a majestic series of la- 
ments for a friend whose memory they would 
snatch from oblivion. Yet while they give a 
pungent sense of the grief of the mourner, in 
all alike he who is mourned is but thinly 
painted. What the facts of his life were, his 
intellectual interests, the detailed traits of his 
character, or even what was his outward ap- 
pearance we do not learn. He in whose honor 
the poem was written remains a shadow, while 
our interest in him who has suffered the loss is 
deep and poignant. 

The transmission of a mood, however, is no 
simple matter. Three difficulties attend it: 
vagueness of the original mood, entanglement 
with other mental factors, and imperfect mas- 



INTRODUCTORY 11 

tery of the means of transmission. The poet's 
rank is fixed by the way in which he meets 
these obstacles. The most serious of them is 
the first. Adverse or favorable circumstances 
excite feeling in us all, but the feeling is usually 
vague. Many of us can hardly distinguish the 
emotional coloring of one hour from another. 
We pass our time largely in routine, and only 
occasionally does an incident induce a mood 
so vivacious and solid as to hold our attention 
for more than a brief space. Now, good poetry 
is the expression of high emotion. Whether 
prompted by direct experience or by sympa- 
thetic imagination, the feeling must be abun- 
dant, fresh, piercing, clearly outlined, if it will 
move the imagination of a reader. In it there 
should be stock enough for the poet to develop, 
hold enough on the world of fact to render it 
credible, and dignity enough in its theme to 
win enduring approval. Most of us, however, 
experience no such weighty emotions. To the 
men of genius we turn to obtain them. Nine 
tenths of ordinary verse shows little emotional 
experience. Its writers cannot make poetry 
because they have nothing to make it of. 

Or may the seeming deficiency be partly due 
to a different cause.? Feeling does not present 



12 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

itself alone, but in company with observation, 
reflection, purpose, and effort, by all which it is 
blurred. Yet while the ingredients of a mental 
state cannot be altogether parted, they can be 
so discriminated that attention becomes fixed 
on some of a certain kind to the comparative 
neglect of others. This sorting is the poet's 
work. He throws into the foreground those 
emotional elements which in the experience 
of the common man are overlaid by practical 
affairs. In daily life judgments of fact and of 
right cannot be passed by without seriously 
stopping the current of feeling. Perhaps these 
poets do not so much impart what they alone 
possess as reveal to us what we too already 
blindly have. Their report, accordingly, we 
recognize as veracious and familiar, and are 
grateful to them for revealing our hidden 
wealth. Without their aid we could not have 
detached it from its context. 

Or if some piercing experience has thrown 
into exceptional prominence a certain phase of 
feeling, how small is the chance that we can 
deliver it unabated to another person! As well 
expect an ordinary man to paint a landscape 
merely because its beauty is daily spread before 
his chamber window. Receiving emotion and 



INTRODUCTORY 13 

expressing it are not the same thing. The 
latter requires a special aptitude, inventive- 
ness, practice, readiness to comprehend an- 
other's mind, ability to keep feeling fresh 
under inspection, and a gradual mastery of 
those artistic agencies which time has proved 
to have the power of appeal. 

Accordingly I have felt obliged to clog my 
definition of poetry v/ith an adjective and call 
it the conscious transmission of feeling to a 
thoughtful mind. If, for example, I have been 
struck with some sudden joy or stabbed with 
sudden pain, and an exclamation is forced 
from me which well expresses what I feel, I am 
not thereby proved a poet. Something more 
than an instinctive cry is needed for that. 
There must be a purpose of communication, 
a definite plan of attack on another's mind. 
Poetry is no casual and spontaneous affair. It 
involves criticism and control. Wordsworth 
rightly warns us that, unlike feeling felt, poetry 
is feeling recalled in moments of tranquillity. 
And how difficult is such recall. The poet is 
to envisage a mood already past, to hold it 
firm, precise, and vivid, and then devise means 
for conveying it entire to the mind of another. 
Of course a certain cooperation is assumed. 



14 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

The reader must be capable of receiving. He 
should be willing to drop for the moment his 
own conditions and take on those of a different 
person. 

To do its work then poetry requires a shaping 
intelligence besides its emotional matter. Un- 
organized, the mood of feeHng we seek to con- 
vey has little appeahng power. Originally 
bound up with diverse experiences, together 
constituting a life, when detached for report it 
is fragmentary, and appearing — so to speak 
— with ragged edges, is unimpressive. A land- 
scape casually seen is far from being a work of 
art. It contains irrelevant details, while much 
that is needed for understanding is absent. An 
artistic object is one that is complete within 
itself. Unlike nature, it shows no lack or super- 
fluity. Its clear beginning, middle, and end 
give it coherent form. That is what we mean 
by beauty. Self-sufficient, the piece stands as 
if it had always been so, as if indeed the artist 
had imparted only what already belonged to 
it. Accordingly the universal demands of artis- 
tic form may be summarized thus : every piece 
of fine art must possess an inner structure 
adapted to its theme; must contain within its 
own compass whatever is necessary for its 



INTRODUCTORY 15 

comprehension; all its contents must har- 
moniously reinforce the dominant note; what- 
ever does not, through being superfluous, acci- 
dental or jarring, must be eliminated; and the 
process of accomplishing all this must not 
attract attention. Good art attains an ease 
which seems inevitable. 

Yet while all the arts require form, or struc- 
tural unity, each has its own technique, or set 
of tested agencies for conveying emotion of its 
particular kind. Poetry is primarily an art of 
sounds, though unlike music, its nearest of 
kin, it addresses the understanding no less than 
the ear. In great poetry sound and sense so 
cooperate that a good ear as readily recognizes 
an excellent poem by the sequence of its sylla- 
bles as a good intellect does by the weight and 
coherence of its thought. A person possessed 
by a passionate and significant mood, if unable 
to translate it into beautiful sound, may win 
attention in prose but lacks something of being 
a poet. 

Furthermore, the sound, even if beautiful, 
must be suited to the sense. Rightly we speak 
of a tone of feeling; for certain tones convey 
certain moods, regardless of what is said. Tones 
are the only language of the brutes. Like 



16 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

them, we too receive emotional impulse from 
pitch, stress, duration, swiftness, repetition, 
pause; only that possessing articulation, which 
brutes do not, we are able to get greater pre- 
cision in our emotions through suggestive 
groupings of vowels and consonants. These 
the poet harmoniously adjusts. Instinctively 
or consciously he perceives what sounds are 
no mere means for reporting emotions. They 
have worth of their own and are of the very 
stock and substance of the poetry. 

In naming just now the possible modulations 
of sound, I included pitch. By it most of the 
effects of music are obtained. In poetry it 
plays but a small part, and herein lies a funda- 
mental difference of the two arts. Though not 
altogether absent from verse, it enters into it 
only in the same way as it enters prose, as a 
means by which a reader's voice avoids monot- 
ony. But verse has not, like music, a notation 
for indicating pitch. Its chief reliance is on 
time and stress. Southern nations attaching 
greater consequence to time. Northern to 
stress. So extreme is the insistence on stress in 
English that the length or shortness of sylla- 
bles is largely determined by their degree of 
emphasis. Among the Greeks and Romans it 



INTRODUCTORY 17 

was not so. Accent was subordinated, sylla- 
bles being rated by the time spent in pro- 
nouncing tliem. Since these ancient writers 
were the first to analyze poetry and to fix its 
nomenclature, their terms have descended to 
us, and it is usual to call a weighty syllable long, 
a light one short. I shall not quarrel with the 
usage, as many poetic reformers do to-day. 
Abrupt breaks with the past do not attract me. 
Greek prosody has a neatness lacking in most 
of the systems invented since, and will not 
expose us to error if we remember that an un- 
accented syllable usually requires less time in 
utterance than an accented. Until English 
speakers distinguish more sharply between the 
length and stress of sounds we shall not fall 
into error if we somewhat broaden the mean- 
ing of our inherited metrical terms. 

A few of these terms I will here explain, so 
that hereafter I may use them intelligibly when 
pointing out the metrical habits of the poets 
studied. The presumption with which all 
poetry starts is that between feeling and 
rhythm there is an inherent bond. What the 
nature of this is may be gathered from the fact 
that feeling does not, like argument or narra- 
tive, advance in a straight line. It broods, 



18 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

recurs, hovers over. The emotion is returned 
to again and again. Repetition, accordingly, 
is a mighty engine in all the Fine Arts. In 
those where feeling is most dominant, as in 
music and poetry, it is perpetually present. 
Yet it cannot be felt till linked with variety. 
The sound of a clock soothes us best when we 
attribute a little greater loudness to its alter- 
nate ticks. We differentiate our heart-beats. 
Whenever successive sounds occur we construct 
a rhythmic unit, which we then take pleasure 
in repeating indefinitely. Music has such a 
primary unit, the bar, where the duration of 
sound is fixed, but the pitch and continuity 
vary. Repetitions of the bar give a larger unit, 
the phrase. 

In close analogy to the musical bar stands 
the primary element of poetry, the foot, com- 
posed of several syllables, each having a pre- 
scribed length or stress. The favorite foot in 
English is the so-called Iambus, a short sylla- 
ble followed by a long. The reverse of this, a 
long syllable followed by a short, is the Tro- 
chee. Two long syllables, the Spondee, though 
impossible in successive feet, may sometimes be 
introduced singly into a line to give it weight. 
Feet of three syllables, common in the poetry of 



INTRODUCTORY 19 

the last century and a half, have always entered 
into folk-song, but our early poets of standing 
avoid them. They are of two sorts : the Dactyl, 
a long syllable followed by two short, and the 
Anapaest, two short followed by a long. But 
enough of definition. These four or five feet 
will be sufl5cient for our purpose. In order to 
fix them in mind I give a familiar example of 
each: 

The cur | few tolls | the knell | of par | ting day 

Tell me | not in I mournful | numbers 

I am mon|arch of all | I siu-vey 

Half a league, | half a league, | half a league [ onward. 

How many feet shall a line contain? As 
many as suit the phase of feeling described. 
Fitting the measure to the mood requires 
poetic skill. Our ancestors in their rhymed 
chronicles were fond of fourteen syllables, 
seven iambics. Tennyson builds "Locksley 
Hall" with eight trochees. But lines so long 
are too much for a single breath. In reading, 
most persons will divide them, making two 
out of each. Even shorter lines become easier 
for the breath and the understanding if a slight 
pause is introduced near the middle, called a 
cut or csesura. A rhyming word at the end of 
a fine will emphasize its finished unity while 



20 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

marking its companionship with some other 
line or lines. Thus arises a new unit, the 
stanza. A group of stanzas of similar length, 
and all developing a single theme, will then 
complete the metric structure of the poem. 

Among the minor technicalities alliteration 
and assonance may be mentioned, the former 
employed to give greater impressiveness to 
certain words by rhyming their initial conso- 
nants; the latter, where vowels of a hke kind 
distribute a common tone of feehng through- 
out an entire passage. But these are dangerous 
expedients. If noticed, they defeat tlieir end 
by withdrawing attention from the feeling and 
fixing it on trivial details. When Tennyson 
tells us how in a certain courtyard 

"The golden gorge of dragons spouted forth 
A flood of fountain foam," 

we are likely to forget the fountain in our won- 
derment at the feat of Tennyson. Delicacy, 
too, is needed in stopping a line at its end or 
sending it on to find its pause somewhere in 
the following line. Different effects accompany 
each, and either may be excessive. 

In this detailed anatomy of verse — stress, 
foot, line, stanza, caesura, end-stopping, vowel- 
color, alliteration — I would not be under- 



INTRODUCTORY 21 

stood as accounting for the charm of poetry. 
Much of that must always, outside these tech- 
nicahties, remain mysterious, a result of the 
untraceable genius of the individual poet. We 
shall enjoy him more if we know what his poetic 
resources are and something about his under- 
lying processes. But these should not be taken 
as fixed rules, to be universally observed. The 
Fine Arts lose their meaning when they cease 
to be free. Their laws are not made to be kept, 
but to be deviated from, to be circled around. 
If, for example, a poet has no central type of 
verse in mind, art ceases and his poem sprawls. 
While if his conformity to type is too exact, we 
remain unmoved, as before any other piece of 
mechanism. No Indian weaver begins his rug 
without having in mind an orderly pattern for 
its little figures; but never are tliose figures re- 
peated precisely. Blank verse follows a com- 
mon type in Wordsworth and Browning, but 
the product is as different as the two men. 
Counting the fingers will never show how a fine 
poem is built. Beauty is to be had only when 
an orderly form bears the modifying impress 
of a living personality. 

Having thus said the little that is possible 
about the substance, form, and technique of 



22 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

poetry, it only remains to indicate its impor- 
tance. For the writer its importance is obvious. 
Expression eases inner tension. A painful feel- 
ing loses something of its pain when it ceases 
to be exclusively one's own, receives outward 
form, and becomes a thing of beauty; while a 
joyful experience clamors for utterance and 
when spoken seems doubly secure. We all find 
pleasure in expressing ourselves, and that high- 
est form of expression which leaves behind it a 
beautiful, lasting and shareable result brings 
dignity to him who employs it. But where lies 
the value to the community of such transmis- 
sion of feeling to a thoughtful reader .?* What 
contribution can poetry make toward invigor- 
ating human life.f^ 

The first and most considerable comes from 
its work in training the imagination. Poetry 
offers us our best opportunity for entering into 
experiences not our own. It thus corrects our 
tendency to become shut up within our sepa- 
rate selves. People differ widely in understand- 
ing the life of others. Some, of imagination all 
compact, know instinctively the moods of 
those whom they approach. Others seem in- 
capable of comprehending any other minds 
than their own. And how petty, tactless, iso- 



INTRODUCTORY 23 

lated, and poverty-stricken are such lives! We 
are social beings. Each life naturally inter- 
locked with that of others, suffers depression 
when detached. Swift mutual understanding 
brings pleasure and eflSciency. Because poetry 
can train us in a habit of mind so generous, it 
has high social value. 

Yet in this matter there is a marked con- 
trast between the use of poetry by the young 
and the mature. Youth has its private moods, 
states of feeling which it does not understand 
and of which it is half ashamed. Then, to its 
surprise and dehght, it finds that the poets 
have had the same experiences. In them, the 
things at which the youth or maiden blushed 
appear glorious. Young people thus gain im- 
portance in their own eyes, poetry expressing 
them better than they can express themselves. 
This I call the sentimental use of poetry, and 
it is something not altogether to be despised. 
For a time it assists growth. Looking into the 
mirror of humanity, one sees one's own face 
there and knows himself a person of worth. 
But such sentimentality cannot long continue, 
It is childish and enfeebling, a mere means oi 
shutting ourselves more securely within our 
own little cabin. Before they are twenty, most 



24 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

sensible men discard poetry altogether, while a 
few devote themselves to it with a new serious- 
ness, having discovered its imaginative value. 
Like all fine art, it then becomes a means of 
escape from one's own limitations. Through it 
we are able to comprehend subtly moods that 
never were ours and so to live many lives in- 
stead of our little one. When I travel, I do not 
seek the places that are like my home. I go 
abroad for broadening, and consequently turn 
to scenes with a character of their own, scenes 
strange and refreshing. Not that I prefer them 
to mine. On the contrary, I usually return to 
my habitual surroundings with new respect and 
a clearer understanding. But by the study of 
human differences I have gained flexibility, dis- 
cernment, and sympatliy. Now, poetry, when 
rightly taken, is a species of fireside travel. 
It can remove us from the habitual round 
more swiftly than train or steamer. The greater 
the poet, too, the better will he do this, bring- 
ing as he does a wealth of experience. Under 
his discipline, how much better lawyer I be- 
come, how much better physician, how much 
better merchant, how much better anything, 
because I have broken the bondage that binds 
us all — the bondage to self. Taken imagina- 



INTRODUCTORY 25 

lively, poetry is a great liberator. Those 
who go through life without its aid, repelled 
by its sentimental use, work with stunted 
powers. 

Liberating us from ourselves then, poetry 
becomes also our best means of acquaintance 
witli the spiritual ideals of our race. At the 
beginning of this chapter I said that poetry 
records feelings rather than facts or ideals. 
But the saying may easily be misunderstood. 
After all, in order to feel one must feel about 
something. One does not feel in vacuo. Poetry 
reflects what has moved men most. Feeling, 
willing, and knowing are not detachable func- 
tions. In some degree all enter into every men- 
tal state. We may approach experience as the 
observer does, to note its facts; as the moralist 
does, to urge the best treatment of the facts; 
or as the poet does, to picture how his particu- 
lar mind is affected by those facts. These are 
merely three modes of dealing with the same 
matter. Each emphasizes a single aspect of 
life, and to doing its own work each should be 
true. Poetry should not turn aside from its 
individual experience in order to increase know- 
ledge or to stimulate socially useful acts. Such 
alien aims may dull the picture. But feelings 



26 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

that are large and significant spring from large 
and significant things. In poetry we read what 
has impressed men as most significant. Here 
as in a gallery we see the multifold personal 
reactions of joy, sorrow, aspiration, disappoint- 
ment, revolt, triumph, religion, which contact 
with this puzzling world of nature and man 
induces. The history of poetry is a history of 
the ideals which men have counted valuable, 
a truthful history, too, because it shows these 
ideals not as offered to other persons, but as 
affecting the mind of the poet himself. A book 
like the present, which exhibits the gradual 
unfolding of a nation's mind through succes- 
sive conceptions of poetry, is a chapter in the 
history of that nation's civilization. 

When prosaic Audrey asks Touchstone if 
poetry is a true thing, we may confidently 
answer that after its kind it is. It brings us 
face to face with reality. More than any other 
species of writing it sets down how a given 
individual has been affected by nature, regard- 
less of whatever may have come to some one 
else. On faithfulness in this psychologic truth 
its success is staked. For the historic truth of 
how things happened, or even for scientific 
truths, seen in laws and the general principles 



INTRODUCTORY 27 

sought by scholars, it cares Httle. Only sup- 
posing things did happen so and so, according 
to such and such laws, there must be no error 
in stating the feelings experienced. I have 
sometimes thought the two kinds of truth 
might be illustrated by two consecutive stanzas 
of "The Eve of St. Agnes." In the first Keats 
tells how the moon, shining through the stained 
window of Madeline's chamber, "threw warm 
gules on Madeline's fair breast." It is said 
that moonlight will not transmit colors. I 
have never inquired into the fact. It does 
not affect the poetry. But when in the next 
stanza it is narrated how in the maiden's 
undressing 

"Of all her wreathed pearls her hair she frees, 
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one. 
Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees 
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees; 
Half hidden like a mermaid in sea-weed 
Pensive awhile she dreams awake," 

I suspect a psychologic, that is, a poetic, error. 
Keats has previously described the room as 
intensely cold. Did he keep that feeling in 
mind when he allowed Madeline to linger 
naked, meditating over her fantastic dream? 
Human nature does not work in that way. 



28 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

Great poet that Keats is, he seldom slips. In 
his "Belle Dame Sans Merci" he tells how he 
"met a lady in the meads." Perhaps he did, 
perhaps not. No matter. But of what terrible 
veracity is his picture of bhnd longing, mad 
pursuit, empty attainment, and a disappoint- 
ment which strips the world of beauty! Here 
poetry "is a true thing." Just so Shelley's 
"Sky-Lark" sings more truthfully than did 
ever feathered bird. 

And because of this psychological veracity 
poetry is necessary for us all. It repairs the 
wastes of time. Custom lays on most of us a 
heavy hand, removing the background of real- 
ity from our words and thoughts and leaving 
them as mere signs for the guidance of conduct. 
We get used to things, and how dull things 
then become! Glibly we speak of the dazzling 
beauty of a flower; but how much do we ever 
have in mind of what Herbert saw when he 
wrote, 

"O rose, whose hue angrie and brave ^ 
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye"? 

The genuine poet never grows used to any- 
thing. He starts with an individual thrilling 
experience and restores for his readers the fresh- 
ness of their early days. Childhood's wonder- 



INTRODUCTORY 29 

ment returns, and over the marvels all around 
us we glow anew. Rightly are poets called 
seers. He who rejects their illuminating aid 
moves stupidly through life with half-closed 
eyes. 



II 

Geoffrey Chaucer 



II 

GEOFFREY CHAUCER 

It might well seem presumptuous for a person 
with any pretensions to scholarship to under- 
take to set forth in a single brief chapter one of 
the most voluminous poets of our language. 
In Skeat's edition Chaucer's works fill nearly 
two thousand large octavo pages. But I make 
no pretension to literary scholarship and in 
this field am but an amateur. To be a scholar 
in Chaucer demands the devotion of half a life- 
time, so many questions relating to him are 
still in controversy. What ones among the 
many pieces bearing his name were written by 
him? What ones merely composed under his 
influence.^ From what sources does he derive 
his material.'* For this creative genius, like 
Shakspere, seldom invents what he can bor- 
row. Then too what are the precise facts of 
his life? Plentiful rumors about him have 
floated down from antiquity; but are these 
rumors trustworthy? What evidence is there 
for them, and do they harmonize with other 
known facts? It is a vast affair, becoming 



34 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

acquainted with Chaucer. But shall we delay 
our enjoyment till all these puzzling questions 
are settled? If we had picked a volume of 
Chaucer out of an ash barrel, and never had 
heard his name, should we not see at once the 
quality of the writing and know that its author 
must have had a prodigious influence over 
his contemporaries and successors? It is this 
aesthetic interest in Chaucer — an interest 
open even to one who lacks special historic 
training — which I would emphasize. I wish 
my readers to look upon his work as the best 
example we have of an important type of 
poetry, one of the earliest types and he the first 
to present it adequately. All else in the great 
world of Chaucer I pass by. Whatever facts 
about him I borrow from the accredited author- 
ities will have sole reference to this aim. As an 
account of Chaucer this chapter will be meagre 
indeed. For illustrating a certain formative 
type of delightful poetry, it may be suflScient. 
But the word "type" is obscure, almost 
mysterious. It needs definition. If we are to 
find "formative types" in English poetry, we 
should know precisely what to look for. Here 
then, in connection with our first poet I will 
try to make the matter plain. In my first 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER B5 

chapter I pointed out that poetry does not 
primarily seek to inform : it is not a statement 
of facts or of ethical precepts. It aims at the 
conscious transference of a mood. Accordingly; 
in estimating the beauty of a poem our chief 
question is how completely is that mood pre- 
sented.'' Is it vivid, rounded, fully organized.'* 
Has everything been stated which belongs to 
it, which would enable it to affect us as it 
affected the poet himself .f* And then, of course, 
the universal demand of art — is it severe; 
has everything been cut away which could pos- 
sibly be spared? 

The significance of a mood, however, varies 
according as it is a profound and permanent 
or a transient one. We all have our temporary 
moods, and not infrequently pungent ones. 
Something makes us taste of life more deeply 
than is our wont, and our dull tongues are 
quickened. We try to set forth our emotion 
for others to share. Under an urgent experience 
an ordinary man may become temporarily a 
poet. The very forms of verse bring a relief 
to his mood. Such persons who rise to the 
height of a single poem, or a few poems, we 
may call poetic writers, in contrast to the true 
poets. And of course many a one sinks below 



36 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

this level. He has some vague feeling which he 
imperfectly comprehends and can only imper- 
fectly state; yet having a certain knack of verse 
he writes with neatness and we loosely speak of 
what he produces as "poetry." How can we 
distinguish this from the true stuff .^^ From the 
point of view of the writer I have called poetry 
the conscious transference of a mood. From 
that of the reader it is a fragment of reality 
seen through a temperament. The poetic writer 
has no temperament; the poet has. 

To get an understanding of what we mean 
by a temperament we had better go quite out- 
side the realm of poetry and examine certain 
experiences of common life. Suppose on a 
street-corner of a busy city a group of men 
stand watching the moving crowd in the street. 
Their eyes turned in the same direction, do 
they all see the same things? The majority of 
them perhaps do. If we could penetrate their 
inner minds we should probably find little 
difference in the perceptions of four fifths of 
the onlookers. Their observation is superficial. 
What is seen stirs no one of them deeply. Each 
casts a glance, sees a moving object, recognizes 
it as a human being, and that is about all. But 
in the group are three persons of a different 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 37 

type. One is an artist who, as he gazes on 
the swaying street, is struck with the multi- 
tude of moving arms and legs, with great dark 
spots of body, with certain illuminated masses 
here balancing other illuminated masses there. 
Among the swift motions certain show a har- 
monious rhythm, but there are maladjust- 
ments too, and he is studying how these might 
be pulled together to form an integral whole. 
That is what the artist sees. At his elbow 
stands a statesman, concerned over the well- 
being of his townsmen. He has before him 
what we are accustomed to call the same crowd 
as the artist, but yet how different! For as he 
turns his face upon that struggling crowd he is 
asking how many of these people are well-to-do, 
how many in poverty, what proportion do the 
criminally inclined bear to the good citizens, 
have any sunk so low in the social scale that 
there is no more hope for them — such are the 
statesman's questions. And since such ques- 
tions fill his mind, such are his observations. If 
his artist neighbor should say to him, "Did you 
see that splendid splash of color up there on 
the left.^^" would he not answer, "No, I only 
saw a v/retchedly ragged woman, hiding her 
head in her shawl." This the artist had not 



38 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

seen, for he had been looking for something 
else. But near these two moves a man of God. 
Looking into the wan faces, he asks himself how 
many are lovers of the ways of righteousness, 
how many have grown careless and fallen into 
vice, how many have lost their self-respect and 
can no longer think of duty as a friend.'^ Though 
the statesman and he are scanning the same 
faces, each receives a different shade of im- 
pression. 

And just these special prepossessions of sight 
will be carried away when the three friends 
move from the sidewalk and go up into the less 
frequented parts of the town. Whatever they 
see will come to them colored by their tempera- 
ment, that is, their habitual mode of regard. 
These men have encompassed themselves with 
limitations of vision which, while allowing 
much that is of value to escape, enable them 
to perceive more fully the value of what they 
do see. Each of these temperamental persons 
is so inwardly fashioned that only certain sides 
of the world can come at him. And with this 
state of things each is on the whole content. 
His work is thus defined. He knows what he is 
called to do. And so far from despising such a 
one, we should honor him for accepting so lim- 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 39 

ited a section of life. Only so can he acquire 
an aptitude of sight and judgment, and become 
able to disclose the deeper things of the world 
to his fellows. 

Now, what is obvious here in common life is 
no less true in poetry. The great poets are 
those who have a temperament, a permanent 
attitude of mind, who have habituated them- 
selves to approach all things on certain single 
sides and are contented with their limitations. 
Their moods are not thin and shifting. A tem- 
peramental type stamps all their work. How 
idle then for us when we would read poetry to 
bring with us a standard of what all poets 
should be; and because on opening a volume 
we do not find this there, to close it again 
thinking it has no value for us, we don't like 
it! "Like" or "don't like," that is the test 
ordinarily applied; and nothing more surely 
hinders growth. We bring our prepossessions, 
our little fragmentary temperaments and ex- 
pect the great man to have no other. We go 
to the poets with the demand that they reflect 
ourselves. If they do, we give them the supreme 
honor of liking them ; if they do not, we decline 
the labor of understanding. Such is the senti- 
mental way of reading poetry, and it should b^ 



40 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

dropped in our teens if we would not grow up 
weaklings. 

But if we desire to enlarge our imagination 
and increase the scope of our life, we cannot 
do better than to turn to the great poets pre- 
cisely because they are of a different type from 
ourselves. Let them take us in charge and in- 
struct us how the world looks from their point 
of view. It is the poet's work to emancipate 
us from ourselves. Other men are able to do 
it but partially. The poets do it veraclously. 
For the moment they can make their life ours, 
if we will put ourselves under their guidance 
and not insist on all doing the same thing. 

In some such way English poetry will be 
studied in this book. Regarding each of these 
poets as but a medium for bringing about the 
enlargement of the English mind, I give no 
detailed account of a poet's life and writings. I 
seek to furnish insight, not information. Such 
facts as can be had from a biographical dic- 
tionary I omit, or use only so far as they help 
to determine the type of the poet. I want to 
lay bare his psychology and to show how natu- 
rally connected with this are the peculiarities 
of his writings. What is his attitude of mind.'^ 
What aspects of the world is he interested in 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 41 

setting forth? That is all. If I can conduct my 
readers to the point of view from which they 
can comprehend what each poet has to say, I 
shall count it of little consequence that they 
do not like what he says. Has he said it well, 
I ask, and felt it deeply .^^ If so, let us be grate- 
ful. Every phase of human nature, truly dis- 
played, has value and enriches us all. Let us 
then be flexible-minded and, putting ourselves 
successively in charge of these men, let us en- 
deavor to see the world as each of them saw it. 
But while varieties of individual tempera- 
ment create a multitude of interesting types, 
these are not all of equal consequence. The 
difTerences among them are often small. But 
from time to time, and usually when old ways 
of poetizing are outworn, some genius appears 
whose temperament is of so divergent, fresh 
and pronounced a type that it becomes forma- 
tive over his successors. Some new phase of 
human experience, or at least a new mode of 
handling it, is disclosed by him, and those who 
come after are enabled to see and do what 
without him they could not have seen and done. 
It is these truly formative types which interest 
me. A small number of those which have been 
most influential I here examine. 



42 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

When English poetry first sets out — I do 
not meddle with the Saxon and Norman forms 
which preceded — but when that which may 
fairly be called English poetry first sets out, 
we meet a mighty figure, Geoffrey Chaucer, 
1340-1400 — easy dates to remember. His 
work is in an elementary type of poetry, but 
one which needed to be developed before others 
could arise at all. That type we must keep 
steadily in mind if we would enjoy him, for 
from it most of his excellence is derived. It is 
narrative poetry, vivid description, rooted in 
the observation of facts. Chaucer looks out 
upon the world, enjoys it, and attempts to 
reproduce it for our pleasure. His poetry re- 
flects hearty content with the world as it 
stands. Such mere reproduction of welcomed 
experience must underlie all other varieties of 
verse. Of it Chaucer is the acknowledged 
master. 

The closer we come to Chaucer, the more 
remarkable it seems that he was able to do 
work of this naturalistic sort. The conven- 
tional obstacles which he inherited were enor- 
mous. Under the magnitude of them a lesser 
genius would have succumbed. For a vast 
store of theology was handed over to him which 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 43 

had been accumulated reverently through cen- 
turies, though only half understood either by 
those who read or wrote it. An ecclesiasticism 
too protected by the State, sternly prescribed 
what men should beHeve and read, repressing 
individual inquiry. At this time it was ren- 
dered freshly suspicious by Wiclif and his fol- 
lowers. Verbose moralizing was also in fashion, 
platitudes w^ere accepted as profundities, and 
to their length, tedium, and emptiness, no one 
seems to have objected. Everybody too de- 
hghted in fantastic allegory, the very opposite 
of obser^T^ational truth. And if we are to com- 
plete the catalogue of Chaucer's adverse condi- 
tions, we must mention the fondness of his age 
for the inferior writers of antiquity and for 
those extravagant legends of chivalry where 
mere events and coincidences are the main 
thing and little attention is given to human 
character. 

Such was Chaucer's burdensome inheritance. 
He did not reject it. The wise man counts pre- 
cious the stock the past brings him, enters into 
it heartily, but ever adds to and modifies it. 
It is a good saying that a man or nation that 
has no past is not likely to have a future. He 
who rebels against what he receives is apt to be 



44 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

left meagre. But what is received must not be 
allowed to keep its outgrown character. The 
poet, at least, puts his own impress on all that 
comes his way. How just is Bacon's statement 
that the beauty of excellent art consists in the 
homo additus natures, the stamp of the human 
being set on the world around! And the re- 
mark is no less tiiie of the world of inner experi- 
ence, which tradition brings, than of the physi- 
cal world reported by our senses. The poet 
accepts them both, but passes them through 
his special temperament. 

At least so Chaucer did. All the rubbish of 
the past which I have assembled in my previous 
paragraph Chaucer uses about as abundantly 
as do his contemporaries. Obvious moralizing 
does not disturb him. Sonorous divinity, fre- 
quent quotation, magical agencies, strained 
allegory, belief in absurd legends — yes, even 
the dream as the framework of a tale — all the 
literary furniture of his time he cheerfully 
adopts. His stories are often not his own, but 
have been already told by Latin, Itahan, or 
French writers, he recasting them according 
to his f ancy^ He often strikes one as too mod- 
est, over docile, too much inclined to look up 
to those who are beneath him. Yet he borrows 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 45 

nothing that he does not transform. Dead 
matter of the past he fills with living character. 
Vivid individual portraiture which hitherto 
had hardly been attempted in English litera- 
ture, is Chaucer's passion. All his improbable 
stories, stuffed with theologic, moral and physi- 
cal lore are prized by him as material for the 
setting of endless varieties of mankind. Just 
as it exists, he rejoices in humanity, in its 
squalor, splendor, misfortune, tragedy. All 
gives him what he wants, the opportunity to 
depict. No doubt unworthy people are often 
his subjects, coarse and degraded people. A 
coarse man too is sure to think coarse thoughts 
and use coarse words. He who depicts him 
accurately must not be squeamish over foul- 
ness. Chaucer is not. In its indication of char- 
acter he even takes a hearty pleasure. On the 
other hand Chaucer's world abounds in high- 
bred knights, priests, scholars, lawyers, admin- 
istrators, with attractive, refined and dutiful 
women not a few, all trained from youth to 
noble thought and gentle manners; and to 
these again Chaucer does imaginative justice. 
His aim everywhere is that announced by 
Shakspere, "to hold the mirror up to nature." 
If Chaucer can only get the moving world — 



46 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

the human world as he sees it in rich variety 
around him, — if he can get this actual world 
transferred to his pages, and make us as inter- 
ested as himself in the queer actions, the ab- 
surdities, the glories, the degradations even, of 
his fellow men he will be content. His dra- 
matic power is extreme. He suits each tale to 
the character of him who tells it. 

But if the desire to keep close to reality is 
the distinctive mark of Chaucer, can we give 
his writings the name of poetry? By doing so 
shall we not come into conflict with the doc- 
trine of our first chapter .^^ There it appeared 
that the antithesis of poetry was not prose, 
but fact. Poetry, being the conscious trans- 
mission of emotion into responsive minds, may 
use as its medium verse or prose, if only what it 
transmits is something else than fact. Accord- 
ingly we have defined poetry as a fragment of 
reality seen through a temperament, and have 
regarded the temperament as the more im- 
portant part of the mixture. Now if we 
merely hold a mirror up to nature and content 
ourselves with what is reflected there, we leave 
out exactly that which is precious. Many 
therefore deny the name of poetry to narra- 
tive verse, and with much plausibility. Verse 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 47 

that furnishes information about men and 
things, however subtle that information may 
be and conveyed in however dehcate phrases, 
is after all only exquisite prose. The name of 
poetry should be reserved for that which con- 
veys emotion, and this descriptive verse need 
not do. 

With such views I largely agree and hold 
that so far as any verse fixes attention on a 
mere sequence of happenings, its poetry re- 
cedes. But I also feel that such opinions should 
in no way lessen our admiration of Chaucer. 
He interests us not primarily by the facts he 
presents, but by his emotional presentation. 
His is a marvelous temperament. That multi- 
tude of curiously diversified persons to whom 
he introduces us is seen through an exceptional 
reflecting medium. Nowhere else is such bon- 
homie to be found, such candor, such indispo- 
sition to judge — at least to judge harshly — 
such modesty, such incessant playfulness, such 
power of pathos and of memorable utterance. 
It is because this golden glov/ is over all his 
pages that we turn to them as artistry. Most 
of the information recorded there is rubbish 
and negligible. But the poetry is abundant 
and precious. 



48 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

The few events of his life that are surely 
known show him to have been fortunately 
trained for the office of human interpreter. No 
doubt another man might pass through his 
experiences and bring out a different result. 
We cannot judge circumstances without refer- 
ence to the character they affect. Perhaps 
a character like Chaucer's would have turned 
the most unpromising to profit. But certainly 
there are few men who through a long career 
can be counted so continuously fortunate. 

Fortune favored him at the start, making 
him a member of no single class. He was not 
of noble birth and so cut off from knowledge 
of the common lot; not even a university man, 
disciplined into undue reverence for the past. 
He came out of the ranks of trade. Indeed his 
father followed a trade most suitable for the 
parent of so genial a gentleman. His father 
was a wine merchant in good circumstances, 
who probably supplied wines to the court. 
Nothing is known of his son's youth till in 1357 
we find him mentioned as being measured for 
a suit of livery in the train of the wife of the 
Duke of Clarence, one of the King's sons. That 
is, he now crosses the border line, leaves the 
men of commerce, and joins the noble class. 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 49 

with which his Hfe is henceforth allied. Chaucer 
is an excellent climber. He never goes back- 
ward in the social scale. He loves all that is 
rich and splendid and is skilful in appropriat- 
ing a good share to himself. By the time he is 
a man, therefore, Chaucer is acquainted both 
with court and commonalty. 

Critics divide his life into four periods; the 
first, the period of his youth, running from 
about 1340 — the date of his birth is not cer- 
tain — to 13G0. Few events are reported of 
him in this period. There is his change in 
station, probably too he began early to write 
verse; and then in 1359, as a soldier in the 
Hundred Years' War, he crossed with the Eng- 
lish army to France, was taken prisoner there, 
and ransomed a year later. Such an experience 
of war and imprisonment might naturally pro- 
duce rancor tov/ard the foe. But in Chaucer's 
kindly soul there was no room for rancor. On 
the contrary, this imprisonment gave him an 
opportunity to know his sweet enemy. Franco, 
and to become better acquainted with French 
literature. He always remained an admirer of 
things French, though eight or ten years later 
he took part in anotlier campaign in France. 

A second period of Chaucer's life is that be- 



50 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

tween 1360 and 1372. Near the beginning of 
this period he seems to have left the service of 
the Duke of Clarence for that of the King and 
to have come under the special patronage of 
his powerful son John of Gaunt, Duke of Lan- 
caster. In 1366 he married Philippa, one of the 
ladies in waiting on the Queen. Her last name 
is not known. Throughout this time he wrote 
under French influence and, always disposed 
to over-estimate the powers of others in com- 
parison with his own, he busied himself with 
translating and adapting the beautiful French 
poetry which he had learned to enjoy. During 
this time he was rapidly advancing in court 
favor, in power and property. 

In 1372 a new period of his life begins and 
extends to 1386. In 1372 he was sent to Italy 
to settle some perplexing questions of trade. 
A year was spent in Genoa and Florence. In 
Italy he found the Renaissance even more 
advanced than in France and of course much 
more than in remote England. He came under 
the influence of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio. 
They opened to him a new world of beauty 
and gave fresh impulse to his poetic powers. 
For while Chaucer is a courtier, soldier, envoy, 
practical man of affairs, he is also persistently 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 51 

a writer, eager not merely to enjoy the world 
but also to report it for the enjoyment of 
others. His audience too was a definite one. 
He was a singer to court circles, to those who 
valued entertainment and the light touch more 
than earnest reflection. His verse needed to 
be attractive. The years from 1372 to 1386 
have been called Chaucer's Italian period 
when the influence of Italy succeeded that of 
France. But the period involved much busi- 
ness besides. Duiing it Chaucer served seven 
times as a foreign envoy. 

By 1386 there is reason to believe he had 
set himself seriously to planning and compos- 
ing the "Canterbury Tales." A truly English 
poetry is here begun. Chaucer has found him- 
self, has cast off foreign influences and hence- 
forth ventures to set forth what he discovers 
in ordinary English life. And now for the first 
time there fell upon him a few years of hard- 
ship, hardship wliich he did not allow to check 
his poetic activity. On the contrary, he seized 
on the unwonted leisure and made it helpful 
for his great design. In 1388, Parliament 
obliged the young King Richard II to dismiss 
his uncle, John of Gaunt, Chaucer's constant 
friend and protector, and to put himself under 



52 FOEMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

the guidance of Gaunt's brother and enemy, 
Gloucester. Chaucer shared in the disfavor of 
his patron. He was no longer acceptable at 
court, was dropped from his offices, obliged to 
mortgage his pensions, and the splendid house 
which had been his was taken away. He shows 
at this time every sign of hardship. At the 
beginning too of this dark period his wife died. 
But hardship could not long attend a man so 
cheerful, attractive, and useful. When in 1389 
John of Gaunt was recalled, offices were once 
more given to Chaucer, and for his remaining 
years he had little to complain of except that 
his income was not always sufficient for his 
expensive modes of living. Throughout his 
life, with the exception of the brief period men- 
tioned, all that men desire seems to have been 
his. Besides holding other lucrative offices, 
he was comptroller of wool, collector of cus- 
toms. Clerk of the King's Works, inspector of 
roads, and member of Parliament. Yet he 
pursued intellectual beauty through all his busy 
days and, coming in contact with a wide range 
of human nature, he enjoyed it all and de- 
lighted to depict its varieties for our delecta- 
tion. 

In the "Canterbury Tales" Chaucer assem- 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 53 

bles twenty-nine characters, men and women, 
each sharply distinguished from the rest and 
each representing a social type. We have here 
a kind of epitome of English society. It has 
been well said that if all other histories of the 
time should perish, Chaucer's book alone re- 
maining, we might know pretty well how the 
people of those days lived. These twenty-nine 
having assembled at the Tabard Inn in Lon- 
don, set forth on horseback the following day 
on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas of 
Canterbury. Pilgrimages were at that time the 
popular mode of combining diversion, piety, 
good company, and safe travel. To relieve the 
tedium of the way the host of the Tabard Inn, 
their leader, proposed that each should tell a 
couple of tales on the way to Canterbury and 
a couple more on the way home. Of course the 
scheme, if seriously intended, was too ambi- 
tious and remained unfinished. Only twenty- 
four tales are recorded. But how vivid these 
are! How marked with the high spirits, the 
keen observation, the humor and narrative 
skill of him who was the first in our poetry to 
study his fellow men! We cannot suppose all 
the tales to have been written during the last 
years of Chaucer's life. He is more likely to 



54 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

have then brought together much of the work 
of previous years, to have reshaped it with 
ripened judgment for his immediate purpose, 
to have added certain new tales, and then to 
have set forth the whole, happily welded to- 
gether with interludes of talk, as a kind of 
Comedie Humaine of the English people. 

Here then is the first great type of English 
poetry, that observational type which under- 
lies all others. The aim is pure representation, 
the joyous exhibit of the world as we find it. 
It is inapposite to complain that it offers us 
no high ideals. Certainly not. Why should 
Chaucer concern himself with such perplexing 
things.'^ Would he have been able to depict his 
characters with his present hearty accuracy if 
he had also felt obliged to weigh the worth of 
their springs of action .^^ Instead, he makes his 
cheerful sun to shine on the just and on the un- 
just. In his eyes degraded and exalted are of 
equal interest. That is, he works as Shakspere 
works, dealing as fairly with his villains as with 
the purest of his heroines. All are here. There 
is nothing one-sided in his picture. Only it 
is mere depicting, re-presentation. Feeling 
strongly the glow of the world and marvelously 
endowed with the power to transfer that glow 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 55 

to his pages, he sits in judgment on no man. 
Yet where, outside Shakspere, can such a multi- 
fold world be seen? How we may enlarge our 
experience if, putting ourselves under Chau- 
cer's guidance, we let him introduce us to the 
delightfully mixed society he knew! For while 
his subjects are often drawn from antiquity, 
from legends of Greece and Rome as well as 
from the credulous stories of the Middle Ages, 
the men and women in them come straight 
from the streets of London. Even when their 
names are those of great ones of old, their char- 
acters are such as Chaucer knew. 

To what extremes Chaucer was ready to 
carry abstention from praise and blame in 
order to remain true to his special task of dis- 
passionate dramatic narration may best be 
seen if we recall the four momentous events of 
his time: the great war with France, the reli- 
gious awakening under Wiclif and his follow- 
ers, the Black Death which destroyed half the 
population of England, and the rising of the 
wretched farm-laborers under Wat Tyler. One 
would think that such occurrences would have 
power to turn any one from pleasant story- 
telling and oblige some expression of personal 
emotion. Chaucer was closely involved in 



5Q FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

them all. He was a soldier in the first. His 
patron, John of Gaunt, favored the second. The 
third was carrying off his friends and acquaint- 
ances by the hundred. And the fourth shook 
London to its foundations. Yet from no writ- 
ing of Chaucer's could one guess the signifi- 
cance of any of these tremendous events. While 
minutely faithful in reporting the characters 
of his age, he keeps prudently clear of men- 
tioning its incidents. Wise courtier he! 

To carry over to his readers such novel 
moods of mind as these, so making them feel 
the Hving world as he felt it, Chaucer needed 
technical instruments of wider compass and 
flexibility than he at first possessed. A few 
standard verse-forms had answered well enough 
most previous requirements, and several of 
them Chaucer retained and managed with 
heightened skill. The early alliterative verse, 
still continued in "Piers Plowman," and also 
the "fourteener" — seven iambic feet — a 
favorite measure of rhyming chroniclers and 
popular balladists, he discarded. He kept, 
however, another common metre of the time, 
the octosyllabic, of four iambics, perceiving 
how well it suited subjects of such easy grace 
as those of this "Boke of the Duchesse." His 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 57 

contemporary, Gower, had employed it for 
solid narrative and grave reflection, for which 
it was little fit. Milton followed Chaucer's 
lead in his "Allegro" and "Penseroso," though 
with exquisite variations of the foot; and But- 
ler found in it the appropriate medium for 
the irresponsible mockery of "Hudibras." 

Another form inherited by Chaucer and 
brought by him to perfection is the Rhyme 
Royal, seven pentameter lines rhyming ababbcCy 
and differing from our ordinary six-lined stanza 
only by the insertion of a line between the 
quatrain and the final couplet. This line, 
delaying and poising the stanza, and giving it 
fuller body, imparts to it a delicate lingering 
beauty which the six-lined form lacks. To it is 
due much of the pathetic majesty of "Troilus 
and Criseyde." In the age immediately after 
Chaucer Rhyme Royal was much in fashion. 
Then for a time it fell out of favor. Words- 
worth used it in "The Leech-Gatherer." And 
it is pleasant to see Morris and Masefield show- 
ing by their right comprehension of its apti- 
tudes that they are true metrical children of 
Chaucer. 

But if only a few standard measures lay 
ready to Chaucer's hand, he set his own strong 



58 FORMATI\«: TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

mark on those few and added to them one 
which has proved of extreme value in Enghsh 
verse. He is the inventor of the heroic couplet, 
the measure in which ten syllables, five iambic 
feet, make up a line which rhymes with a sim- 
ilar one following. In the connecting rhyme 
the couplet finds its unity, becoming thus the 
shortest of English stanzas. Already we have 
seen octosyllabic couplets, but these were in- 
adequate for Chaucer's purpose. He needed a 
more wealthy and weighty line. He added 
therefore an iambic foot to each octosyllabic 
line, still keeping the rhyme. In this way he 
obtained something peculiarly suitable for 
story-telling. Within a fairly capacious couplet 
a piece of reality is, as it were, broken off. 
After this has been contemplated as a united 
whole, the reader passes to a further section of 
the story in a second couplet, and so on. Or if 
reality appears thus too disjointed, it is easy to 
check the pause at the end of any couplet and 
send the thought directly on into the succeed- 
ing line. So by arranging run-over or end- 
stopped lines different metrical effects can be 
fitted to different moods of mind. 

This form of verse has ever since been found 
immensely useful in more ways than that in 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 59 

which Chaucer employed it. It serves admir- 
ably for epigrammatic and moral sayings. 
Words of wisdom are doubly impressive when 
massed in this brief but sufficient compass. 
Indeed the measure fits so well many ends that 
it has become one of our commonest. But that 
very flexibility exposes it to dangers. It may 
easily lack dignity and continuous interest. 
Managed as it is by Chaucer, it is an instru- 
ment of great power and animation. I have 
called Chaucer the inventor of this verse, the 
heroic couplet, as it has been named. More 
exactly he is its introducer. Five foot iambic 
lines existed before his time, and occasional 
instances of combining them into a couplet 
could no doubt be found in French poetry. But 
Chaucer was the first to perceive the impor- 
tance of such a couplet, to develop its possi- 
bilities, and through his weighty example to 
bring it into familiar use. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 

For Chaucer's sharp drawing of individual character, 
read the Prologue of the "Canterbury Tales." Or, if 
only a few sections can be read, "The Knighte," lines 43- 
78, "The Prioresse," lines 118-162, "The Cook," lines 
285-308, "The Persoun," lines 477-528, "The Miller," 
lines 545-564, will show the range and accuracy of his 
portraiture. 

Read too, for continuous humor, "The Nonne Preestes 
Tale," with its Prologue as an example of the conversa- 
tions on the road. 

For splendid description, "The Temple of Mars in 
The Knightes Tale," Imes 1970-2050. 

For psychologic and dramatic insight, the meeting of 
the lovers in "Troilus and Criseyde," bk. ii, st. 88-97. 

For spirited action, the sea-fight of Cleopatra, in the 
"Legend of Good Women," lines 624-665. 

For lightness of touch in depicting a charming lady, 
"The Boke of the Duchesse," lines 805-906. 



Ill 

Edmund Spenser 



Ill 

EDMUND SPENSER 

In the popular mind Chaucer and Spenser are 
grouped together, as if separated by only a 
brief interval. In reality two hundred years 
intervene. What this means we can make 
clearer by saying that there is the same distance 
between the "Canterbury Tales" and "The 
Faerie Queene" as there is between the latter 
and the "Lyrical Ballads" of Wordsworth; 
that is, the interval would stretch across two 
thirds of all poetry since Spenser's time. How 
does it happen, then, that we so confuse the 
eras of the two? There are two grave reasons, 
apart from the fact that Spenser looks up to 
Chaucer as his master and speaks of him as the 
one whom poetically he follows. In the first 
place, distance is regularly "foreshortened in 
the tracts of time." In looking far back we do 
not measure intervals with anything like the 
vividness we feel for those that have recently 
passed. But more misleading still is the bar- 
renness of the intervening period. Names 



66 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

enough of poets appear in these centuries, 
respectable men who have each done some- 
thing to keep the tradition of poetry unbroken, 
but they are men of mediocre power. Such was 
the Httle group immediately around Chaucer 
— Gower, Lydgate, Occleve. The writers who 
followed — Skelton, Hawes, Barclay — were 
imable to hold the path which Chaucer had 
marked out. They could not write verse of his 
flexible firmness. Their lines either, retaining 
his ten syllables, show a mechanical rigidity or 
more commonly through looseness of structure 
the line is almost lost. In the middle of the 
sixteenth century Wyatt, Surrey, Sackville, 
Gascoigne form a group of scholars interested 
in developing the resources of the language and 
in giving better structure to its verse. Their 
admirable work reaches its consummation in 
Spenser, with whom modern poetry begins. 
Reasons for the long delay are not far to seek. 
During these two centuries no man of any- 
thing like Chaucer's genius was born. Politi- 
cal conditions, too, were unfavorable; in the 
early time the Wars of the Roses, in the later 
the change from the Catholic to the Protes- 
tant faith. But probably a greater hindrance 
was the unsettled state of the language itself. 



EDMUND SPENSER 67 

As the perplexing final e used by Chaucer 
gradually disappeared from popular speech, 
it became increasingly diflScult to read him 
metrically. His great example was lost, and 
it became necessary to formulate again the 
principles of English prosody. This was accom- 
plished by Spenser and the group immediately 
preceding him. 

We have seen how Chaucer had perfected a 
type of poetry expressive of satisfaction with 
the world as it stands — joie de vivre, delight 
in everything that belongs to man. The form 
which this observational verse assumes is natu- 
rally the narrative, a form by no means con- 
fined to Chaucer. He was merely the first to 
unfold its dramatic possibilities. But narra- 
tive poets are common throughout the follow- 
ing ages, though few of these story-tellers pos- 
sess Chaucer's vital interest in humanity. 
Spenser himself once tried this type in "Mother 
Hubberd's Tale," and wisely abandoned it. In 
the seventeenth century it was extensively 
used. Chamberlayne's " Pharronida," Daven- 
ant's "Gondibert," Chalkliill's "Thealma and 
Clearchus" are examples. In the eighteenth 
century it declined and was largely superseded 
by aphoristic verse and prose fiction. When 



68 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

once the novel is established there would seem 
to be no more need of narrative verse. But on 
the contrary, descriptive poetry takes on new 
life. With the nineteenth century, Scott writes 
rhymed and unrhymed novels. Crabbe follows 
hard after Chaucer in depicting the life of his 
time, and a long train of narrative poets fol- 
low, each having his own special color. In 
Byron and Shelley the tale becomes doctrin- 
aire. Hunt, Keats, and William Morris revive 
its earlier narrative interest. The last especially 
has often been mistaken for a child of Chaucer. 
He has stirring stories much after the fashion 
of the "Canterbury Tales," and frequently too 
he uses Chaucer's couplet and Rhyme Royal. 
Yet what a gulf separates Morris's work 
from Chaucer's! The two are antithetic. For 
Chaucer is not merely a story-teller. He tells 
stories of his own time, fills them with the 
things and people he knew, and even when 
taking his plots from antiquity so modernizes 
them as to give them the traits the men and 
women of his England actually had. Morris is 
altogether romantic. His characters are dream- 
creatures. They generally profess to have come 
from afar and they use a language which no 
'biuman being ever spoke. They have more 



EDMUND SPENSER 69 

kinship with Spenser than with Chaucer. But 
while narrative poetry may thus be used for ro- 
mantic purposes rather than reahstic, the type 
as first estabhshed aimed at a representation 
of the actual world, though even then it was 
the temperament of the writer which gave to 
the narrative its poetic charm. 

In general it may be said that the maturity 
of our enjoyment of poetry can be fairly meas- 
ured by the degree of importance we attach to 
its emotional as contrasted with its realistic 
elements. Narrative poetry is elementary. 
With it poetic interest begins. Children and 
primitive people want a story and little else, 
except strongly marked rhythm. As artistic 
taste becomes refined, incident retreats and is 
regarded merely as a basis for emotional devel- 
opment. It is the same with our enjoyment of 
pictures. We at first prefer those that tell a 
story. Of each we ask what it is all about.? But 
by degrees we come to see that the anecdotic 
power of the painter has little to do with his 
art. As an artist, his mind is on other things — 
on color, on light and shade, on the harmony 
of lines, the balance of masses. He looks upon 
his figures as important only so far as they 
mirror a mood of mind, and the instruments 



70 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

for conveying that mood are the technical 
matters I have mentioned. 

Curiously enough we have recently seen one 
of the fine arts move in the opposite direction. 
Up to our time music had aimed at pure beauty; 
"absolute music" we called it, the emotional 
concord and sequence of sounds. But it oc- 
curred to certain ingenious persons that they 
might by manipulating sounds suggest a story 
and represent facts. So program-music has 
been bewildering us all. Strange, that just 
when m painting we are coming to regard the 
story as a mere auxiliary of the picture, and 
notwithstanding the fact that the poets have 
long laiown something similar to be true in 
their art, the musicians are now endeavoring 
to tell us stories and are disparaging the 
aesthetic cadences which have pleased the 
world so long! 

If what I have been saying is sound and 
description, accordance with outward fact, is 
but a subordinate part of poetry, its mere 
starting-point, then we might expect a type 
of poetry to arise which should be the very 
opposite of Chaucer's. A poet might well 
desire to withdraw as far as possible from sub- 
jection to fact and find in verse a veritable 



EDMUND SPENSER 71 

refuge from reality. For that real world, which 
Chaucer enjoyed so much, oppresses many. 
Its natural laws, governing inexorably physical 
change, often seem hostile to man. They ignore 
our ideals and conflict with our desires. Yet 
ideals and desires are all that lend life worth. 
It is no wonder, then, that in every hterature 
certain poets turn disdainfully away from 
reality and live in a region of ideal emotion. 
They allow themselves only so much contact 
with actual experience as will bring the creative 
impulse into play. The master of all these 
poetic idealists is Edmund Spenser. 

Spenser and Chaucer, so often coupled in our 
thought, have only the relation to one another 
of a complete and supplemental antithesis. 
Spenser, it is true, regarded Chaucer as his 
master, and no doubt gained from Chaucer 
much acquaintance with the metrical tools of 
his trade. But he understood the substance of 
Chaucer as little as Virgil understood Homer. 
His office it was to develop a type of poetry 
not hitherto known. Let us try to grasp the 
central thought of this new type and see how 
naturally the special qualities of Spenser's 
poetry result from it. We have already noticed 
his alienation from actual existence, and his 



72 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

absorption in a world created by himself. This 
constant tendency is manifested in a variety of 
ways. I will examine a few of them. 

Spenser is busied with the abstract and gen- 
eral, nature with individuals. Nature knows 
John and Susan, not universal man; blades of 
grass, not grass. Everywhere we meet only 
particular existences. General objects, such as 
classes, laws, abstract ideas, are products of 
our minds, put upon multitudinous nature for 
our convenience of comprehension or memory. 
Similarity, and those connecting relationships 
from which generalization springs, belong to 
the beholding mind rather than to existing 
things. Chaucer understands this and in his 
naturalistic poetry gives us no picture of man 
as man nor, of what is more attractive, of 
woman as woman. Women abound, and all 
diverse — Criseyde, Emily, Blanche, Griselda, 
the wife of Bath — they are as vital creatures 
as those whom Shakspere knew. Spenser, on 
the other hand, turning ever away from reality, 
prefers the general to the specific. In none of 
his Books and Cantos shall we find a rounded, 
solid human being. All his figures are abstrac- 
tions, qualities, detached from particular per- 
sons and generalized. What shadowy creatures 



EDMUND SPENSER 73 

are Britomart, Belphoebe, Florimell, Duessa, 
Phsedria! His frank personifications — Mam- 
mon, Mutabilitie — have more blood in them. 
And in all this Spenser is true to type. Con- 
crete individuals belong to that physical uni- 
verse from which he, as a good Platonist, turns 
away. His home is in a world of ideas. 

Spenser is moral, too, and lays great stress 
on distinctions of right and wrong, beautiful 
and ugly. Nature knows no such values. What- 
ever of hers happens to fit our desires we rightly 
enough call good or valuable. Such classifica- 
tions belong, however, not to nature but to our 
judging minds. Good and bad, high and low, 
noble and ignoble are words that express the 
relations which things bear to us. They do not 
mark qualities in the things themselves or in 
relations between things. Parted from man 
nothing is good, nothing bad. Each object 
merely exists, that is all. To get moral or 
£Esthetic worth it must be studied with refer- 
ence to some human need. Chaucer, as a true 
naturalist, does not sit in judgment. He 
watches whatever conduct occurs and reports 
it vivaciously, whether men call it good or bad. 
Nobody is condemned. The coarse must be 
coarse, the refijied refined. That is the way 



74 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

men are made, and so Chaucer lets them ap- 
pear. But such natural equality is shocking to 
Spenser. He is ever applying moral standards, 
discriminating those desires which ennoble 
from those which degrade. In his ideal world 
the struggle between good and evil, beauty and 
ugliness, is incessant. 

This contrast between the two poets is espe- 
cially striking in their estimate of womankind. 
Chaucer knew women well. He married early, 
early became a page at court, and was never 
shut off from women by keeping terms at a 
university. Through his long life as courtier, 
ambassador, civic officer, he met women of 
every rank and character. He made them 
interesting objects of study, precisely as he did 
men. He saw their beauty, gentle manners, 
and pretty caprices; their love of pleasure, 
praise, dress, change, intrigue; their piety, for- 
giving spirit, and hardy fidelity to those they 
love. Cool and dispassionate, he watched these 
dispositions and many more mingle in all 
degrees, shadings, and contrarieties, till each 
woman emerged on his pages as distinct a per- 
sonality as any man, and quite as amusing. 
On the other hand Spenser's acquaintance 
with women seems to have been slight and 



EDMUND SPENSER 75 

artificial. After seven years at the university 
he spent a short time in the country, where he 
probably experienced a disappointment in love. 
During most of his remaining years he was 
either accompanying the army in Ireland or 
living in his castle there alone. To him, there- 
fore, woman is always something far away and 
ethereal, an exalted object of aspiration, the 
guiding spirit of us poor men. Few differential 
qualities are reported to distinguish one woman 
from another, but all alike conform to the 
angelic pattern — angehc or devilish; for when 
an angel falls, it becomes a devil. A perverted 
woman is consequently a fiercer power for evil 
than ever a man can be. She is as horrible as 
true woman is worshipful, and all are com- 
pletely the one or the other. How rightly fic- 
titious is all this! How suitable for him who 
flies reality, thinks only in abstractions, and 
feels hfe itself to be but a struggle of right and 



wrong 



The contrast between realist and idealist 
appears again in the poetic form employed. 
Spenser's is the allegory, Chaucer's the narra- 
tive, and each has chosen wisely. Chaucer, 
concerned as he was with noting things as they 
appear, perceived that everything is hnked 



76 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

with everything, what now exists containing 
within itself the causes of what will be here- 
after. Nothing in the real world is stationary. 
All is in an orderly flux. To trace the fixed 
sequences and set them in orderly narration is 
the business of the good observer. But Spenser 
is something more than an observer. He is not 
content to stand smiling while the world runs 
its close-linked course, neglectful of ideals. 
That sorry scheme of things he will shatter and 
by allegory *' remould it nearer to the heart's 
desire." With him ideals control circumstances 
and laws of nature have little respect shown 
them. On his pages things happen which are 
grossly improbable, yet do not disturb us. The 
current of events is guided by personal agen- 
cies. The semblance of real life gives place to 
a glorious dream of what life should be, and 
rigid narrative yields to easeful allegory. Let 
us not condemn. A similar instinct is in us all. 
Worried by business, by the unkind word of a 
friend, by the illness of one we love, we turn if 
we are wise to the piano and for half an hour 
escape the jarrings of reality. Here we enter a 
realm of beauty where everything is harmoni- 
ous. Such is Spenser's conception of poetry. It 
is intentionally unreal, a refuge, a restorative. 



EDMUND SPENSER 77 

This difference of mental attitude affects 
even the speech of the two poets. Chaucer 
employs the sturdy words of ordinary Ufe. It is 
true he had a wide range to choose from. Latin, 
Saxon, Norman-French were all current in his 
time, and his judicious choice among them 
largely helped to establish a distinctive English 
tongue. Hardly any other writer has had such 
wide linguistic influence. But that is because 
he sought words of clearness, weight, and dur- 
able significance. Whatever words were good 
for prose served Chaucer for poetry. But since 
for Spenser a great gulf is fixed between poetry 
and reality, the diction of the one is unfit for 
the other. He adopts a mode of expression 
which delights by its very unfamiliarity. He 
resuscitates old words, coins new ones, in short 
produces such a conglomerate of language as 
never proceeded from human lips, but which 
is exactly suited to beautiful allegories. He has 
an extraordinary sensitiveness to the carrying 
power of words and picks them with a view not 
merely to their central meaning, but to that 
penumbra of feeling which surrounds them. 
His delicious diction transports us to a fairy 
region whose inhabitants, we may imagine, 
eat cake instead of bread. The language of the 
streets is not for such unearthly beings. 



78 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

In calling attention to these contrasts with 
the realistic Chaucer I hope I have not dwelt 
unduly on the quahties which the dreamy 
Spenser does not possess. His avoidance of all 
that is specific, his refusal to take part in a 
non-moral world, his allegorizing and slender 
regard for fact, his substitution of a poetic dic- 
tion for that of ordinary life are not defects, 
but essential elements of his power and charm. 
For he is aiming elsewhere than the observing 
or reflective mind. We should approach him 
primarily as a painter or a musician. The effect 
of his poetry is not unlike that of the splendid 
pageants much cultivated in his time. The eye 
is feasted with a succession of graceful forms 
and brilliant scenes, shadowing forth some 
moral truth. He inherits from the Moralities 
which the Church had patronized in the age 
preceding his, where the several vices and vir- 
tues were exhibited with just enough fantastic 
narrative to stick them together. In Spenser's 
own time Court pageants abounded. He had 
fed his eye on gorgeous drapery, stately bear- 
ing, equable motions. He was familiar with 
the blazonry of war. All this he transfers to 
his pages, informs it with a moral; and makes 
it yield us just such a thrill as a beholder 



EDMUND SPENSER 79 

would feel. We may call Spenser the supreme 
showman, for he writes as the painter paints; 
only that he is occupied not so much with 
minute observation of single facts as with the 
exuberant glory reflected from the entire scene. 
Space and generality are essential elements of 
Spenser's power. He has fewer quotable lines 
than most poets, but more magnificent stanzas. 
Or shall we rather call him the supreme musi- 
cian? Certainly no other among our poets, 
unless his pupil Milton, has given to words such 
distributed harmony, so flexible are his lines, 
so smooth-slipping, so welcome as mere sound. 
Only in this field, too, as in that of scenery, his 
effects are broad and massive, even when most 
subtle. He uses much alliteration and abun- 
dant tone-color, but both are employed to link 
his passage and propel the reader on. They 
do not invite us to pause and admire the curi- 
ous art, as do inferior and tinkling poets. All 
the traditional metres of his predecessors are 
at his command, but he has distinct preferences 
among them. The octosyllabic couplet, a favor- 
ite before his time, he uses only in the Envoy 
to "The Shepherd's Calendar." There is not 
room in it for splendor. The decasyllabic coup- 
let, too, which Chaucer if he did not invent 



80 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

at least domesticated, is used by Spenser but 
once or twice. Couplet measures have too short 
a flight. But he uses with extreme delicacy the 
more complex metres : — the six, seven, and 
eight lined stanzas of iambic decasyllabics. 
The special cadences appropriate to each he 
brings out with a sweetness never heard before. 
Especially delightful to my ear is his handling 
of the seven-lined stanza, Chaucer's Rhyme 
Royal. 

But these are all too weak for his ultimate 
and heaven-scaling purpose. For transporting 
us from our "too, too solid earth" to fairyland 
he builds the most magnificent structure Eng- 
lish poetry possesses. We name it from him 
the Spenserian stanza and almost demand its 
use whenever in our time voluminous emotion 
sways a poet's mind. The stanza is long, but 
its nine lines are lashed together by an ingenious 
rhyming system, ababbcbcc. So large a block 
is in danger of falling apart; to prevent which, 
the same sound is repeated over and over, two 
of the repetitions falling at critical points, the 
middle and end of the stanza. The summing-up 
to a culminating close is aided by this repeti- 
tion, but gains its supreme impressiveness 
through the simple device of two extra sylla- 



EDMUND SPENSER 81 

bles in the last line. Instead of being con- 
structed with five iambics, like the rest, the 
concluding line has six, a form of line first used 
in a French poem celebrating the deeds of 
Alexander and hence known subsequently as 
an Alexandrine. What astonishing effects are 
worked by this long supplemental line, form- 
ing, as it does, a noticeable pause, summarizing 
its stanza, and at the same time supplying a 
link to bind stanza to stanza! Surveying the 
stanza as a whole, one must see that no other 
could so surely convey the splendors on which 
Spenser's heart is set. The needful magic is in 
the web of it. 

The Spenserian stanza, however, came slowly 
into general use. Whether on account of its 
novelty or because poets hesitated to rival 
Spenser's magnificence, only a few varieties of 
it appeared during the seventeenth century. 
The eighteenth had too little sensuous feeling 
to find it congenial; and while Thomson, Shen- 
stone, Beattie, and a few others made trial of 
it, their results are effortful and pretty remote 
from Spenser's. With the Romantic Move- 
ment at the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
tury this stanza, like much else in the early 
poetry, was revived and once more " bards of 



82 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

passion and of mirth " developed its riches. In 
it Byron, Shelley, Keats, Arnold have written 
their masterpieces. To-day there is no lack of 
honor for Spenser's great achievement. 

But we shall not lend an ear of just appreci- 
ation either to it or to Spenser's other poetry 
if we fail to observe that it is not to our intelli- 
gence that he primarily makes appeal. He does 
not rouse us to thought; he would turn us from 
it rather. It is no paradox to say that he dis- 
tinctly aims at monotony. At first it would 
seem a fatal aim for a poet. Many uncon- 
sciously attain it. Spenser persistently seeks it 
and uses it as one of his chief poetic resources. 
It is easy to see why. Like all musicians he 
desires not to instruct, but to throw us into an 
emotional mood. To accomplish this he must 
lull us, weave over us a hypnotic spell. When 
we hypnotize a person we take from him all 
diversity of interest, confining his attention to 
certain selected aspects of things. Then we 
can introduce whatever ideas we will. In some 
such way Spenser makes use of monotony. 
Listening to his magic music, we withdraw our 
thoughts largely from the specific statements 
made, receiving chiefly a soothing lull. As this 
overcomes us, the mood is induced which Spen- 



EDMUND SPENSER 83 

ser predestined. How subtle he is in produc- 
ing this mood all know who have examined 
his stanza critically. With what delicacy the 
alliterative throb is introduced, so that while 
its effect is felt the means are hidden. The 
harmonizing vowel-color which he distributes 
throughout a stanza is exactly congruous with 
the mood he would induce. The same musical 
purpose directs his manipulations of the line. 
Somewhere near their middle all lines require 
a brief pause, known as the "caesura. " Placing 
the cjesura here or there will vary the music and 
modify the mood. So will halting the line at 
its close or giving it continuity with the next. 
Spenser uses both, but is more inclined to the 
latter, caring much for swing and flow in his 
stanza. Often he will sweep a stanza through 
its entire length with no full pause from first 
word to last. All these artifices, like those of 
the musician, are employed by Spenser with 
sure-handed skill to carry us away from inhar- 
monious reality to the shining regions of fairy- 
land. 

Spenser's life, 1552-1599, covers one of the 
supreme periods of English history, including, 
as it does, the Spanish wars with the defeat of 
the Armada, the struggle with Mary, Queen of 



84 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

Scots, the exploration of a new world, and the 
establishment of a new faith. In certain re- 
spects there is a strange analogy between his 
life and Chaucer's. Each lived in the reign of 
a heroic sovereign who was felt to embody the 
aspirations of an awakening people. Glorious 
wars too were in progress; in Chaucer's time 
the Hundred Years' War with France, in the 
time of Spenser the Spanish and Irish wars. 
But there were no such desolating domestic 
conflicts as the Wars of the Roses, carried on 
in the barren interval between Chaucer and 
Spenser. Fortunate epochs those, for both 
poets ! 

In Spenser's life, however, we may find some 
grounds for his exaltation of a dream-world 
above the actual. The details of that life, it is 
true, are almost as few and doubtful as those in 
the case of Chaucer. But the dates of birth 
and death are fitted with some degree of cer- 
tainty, as well as those of the three periods into 
which Spenser's life may naturally be divided : 

(1) the years of education, 1552-1576, up to 
the time when Spenser left the University; 

(2) the Wanderjahre, or unsettled time, 1576- 
1588; and the Meisterjahre, or time of consum- 
mate power, 1588-1599. Of the other known 



EDMUND SPENSER 85 

events in the life of Spenser I touch on only 
those which illustrate the type of his poetry. 

(1) Like Chaucer he comes of commercial 
stock, his father being a London cloth mer- 
chant. Characteristically, and unlike Chaucer, 
he romances on his birth and imagines himself 
connected with the noble house of Spenser, a 
claim which has not been substantiated. But 
he early turned away from trade, was prepared 
for the University at the Merchant Tailors 
School in London, and entered Pembroke Col- 
lege, Cambridge, in 1569 as a sizar, or poor 
student — as we say, on a scholarship. Here 
he met three strong influences, all tending to 
draw him away from the world about him. The 
first was classicism. We all know how in the 
early Renaissance the discovery of classical art 
and literature brought to man a more intimate 
knowledge of himself and a closer acquaint- 
ance with nature. But as the Renaissance 
advanced, and especially in the later Renais- 
sance of Spenser's time, classical interests be- 
came an excuse for departure from the sim- 
plicity of nature and for magnifying the worth 
of ornament, a tendency always strong in 
Spenser. Classical studies of this artificial sort 
were much in vogue in the Cambridge of Spen- 



86 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

ser's time and deeply affected him. A leader 
in the movement was Spenser's special friend, 
Gabriel Harvey. This thorough-going pedant, 
who had lost all sense of present reality through 
devotion to antiquity, was attempting to in- 
duce Englishmen to abandon their native mode 
of accentual verse for the quantitative classical 
measures. While Spenser did not permanently 
adopt this absurdity, the influence of Harvey 
and his circle soon appeared: disastrously in 
the artificial pastorahsm of " The Shepherd's 
Calendar," dedicated to Harvey, and bene- 
ficially in the experiments there undertaken 
for enlarging the range of English metres. 
A collateral gain from the acquaintance with 
Harvey is a series of letters between the friends 
which form a valuable source for our knowledge 
of Spenser's life at the time they were written. 
A still more powerful influence then at work 
in the University, and especially at Pembroke 
College, was the rising Puritanism which was 
teaching men to live for things eternal and fos- 
tering detachment from things temporal. Into 
this early and lofty Puritanism Spenser entered 
with ardor. We have seen how profoundly 
moral he always is. While his temperament is 
unmistakably rich and sensuous, while the 



EDMUND SPENSER 87 

pageantry of the Roman Church and its mytho- 
logical history appealed strongly to him, still 
stronger was the appeal of morality, the call to 
organize our nature, putting certain sides of it 
down and others up. This conflict of flesh and 
spirit within us was the dominant note of Puri- 
tanism. It took an abiding hold on beauty- 
loving Spenser. So that Milton's adjectives do 
not go astray — as seldom do adjectives of 
Milton's — when he speaks of "sage and seri- 
ous Spenser." 

One more unworldly influence, perhaps 
underlying the other two, deserves mention. 
At the University Spenser became acquainted 
with Plato, the father of all idealists. The 
"Symposium," the "Phaedrus," the "Repub- 
lic," the "Timseus," were books which fed his 
imagination. He accepted whatever he found 
there. Plato removed him from our earth and 
taught him to believe that things of earth are 
illusory; a faint copy of "ideas" or "patterns'* 
of things eternal in the heavens. This Platon- 
ism pervades Spenser throughout and comes to 
a peculiarly beautiful expression in his "Hymns 
in Honor of Love and Beauty." 

(2) Leaving the University in 1576 without 
obtaining a fellowship or finding any secular 



88 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

position, he went off to the country parts of 
Lancashire, from which section of England his 
family originally came. There he spent a year 
in farm life. One might expect such an experi- 
ence to bring Spenser back into close contact 
with earth. Instead, it intensified his idealism. 
His beloved ancients had a way of looking only 
on the pretty side of farm life, the shepherd 
and his flock becoming creatures of romance. 
Theocritus and Virgil set the fashion of pas- 
toral eclogues. Their Italian imitators just 
before Spenser's time followed on. The pas- 
toral idealizes the squalid facts of the country, 
and Spenser turned to it at once, almost as a 
matter of course, to it and to that which usu- 
ally professes to inspire it, love. For Spenser 
fell in love, he tells us, with the beautiful 
Rosalind who, hard-hearted and incapable of 
foreseeing the glory which awaited her lover, 
rejected him. He went back to the world dis- 
appointed. Disappointment is about as con- 
stant with Spenser as success with Chaucer. 

Gabriel Harvey wrote of a possible position 
in the train of the Earl of Leicester. Spenser 
returned and obtained it. And now begins for 
him that life of court and state to which he had 
always aspired. He parallels Chaucer once 



EDMUND SPENSER 89 

more in this that, bom in the commercial class^ 
he spends his Hf e as a courtier. Yet the associa- 
tion with Leicester, promising as it seemed, 
planted permanent seeds of disaster. Burleigh, 
the Chief Councillor of Elizabeth, was hostile 
to Leicester. Consequently again and again 
when Spenser had hopes of court favor he 
found himself cut off as a dependent of Leices- 
ter's. During the years of his service with 
Leicester in London he felt the fascination of 
young Sir Philip Sidney whose character and 
powers, no less than his literary idealism, 
closely resembled his own. Spenser always re- 
tained for Sidney unbounded admiration, in 
verse lamenting more than once his early 
death. In his eyes, as in those of most men 
of the time, Sidney was the model of accom- 
plished knighthood. 

In 1580 the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland was 
given to the uncle of Sidney, Lord Grey of 
Wilton. Spenser had not succeeded in obtain- 
ing preferment at court and took service with 
Grey as his secretary. For the following nine- 
teen years, with the exception of two or three 
visits to England, disturbed Ireland was his 
home. The Irish were at the time in active re- 
bellion, intriguing with the Spanish, and Grey 



90 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

was sent over to put them down. England 
has never been gentle in dealing with Ireland, 
but the methods of butchery and coloniza- 
tion employed for the next two years sur- 
passed all precedent. Spenser took part in all 
approvingly and no doubt was able to draw 
from the experience material for some of the con- 
tests with monsters in "The Faerie Queene"; 
for we happen to know from a letter of Harvey's 
that "The Faerie Queene" was begun in these 
years, and the building of its beauty must have 
been a welcome relief from the hideous scenes 
then met. When the rebelUon was officially 
ended in 1582 and Lord Grey retired, Spenser 
remained, holding clerkships in one part and 
another of the island during its settlement until 
(3) in 1588 Kilcolman Castle, with a tract of 
adjoining country, was granted him for his serv- 
ices. The castle, which had belonged to the 
Earl of Desmond, the leader of the rebellion, 
stood on the bank of the small river Mulla in a 
picturesque part of the county of Cork. Here 
Spenser lived alone in stately banishment, 
pressing his great poem steadily on. In 1689 
Sir Walter Raleigh visited him and found three 
Books of the poem already finished. He per- 
suaded Spenser to accompany him back • to 



EDMUND SPENSER 91 

England, to publish what he had written, and 
look for favor and place at court. These earliest 
Books were accordingly printed in London in 
1590. They brought him praise from the Queen 
and from the whole intellectual world, with the 
small pension of fifty pounds. He returned dis- 
appointed to Ireland and wrote his account of 
how ** Colin Clout's Come Home Again." The 
fame, too, which he had now acquired in Lon- 
don made a market for other works written 
earlier. He put together two volumes of short 
pieces entitled "Complaints" and *'Proso- 
popoia" and published them in 1591. 

In 1594 he married, wrote his marvellous 
bridal song, "The Epithalamion," and pub- 
lished it with a series of love sonnets, called 
"Amoretti," the following year. From what 
family the lady came, or what were her cir- 
cumstances, we do not know. We only hear 
of her beauty and refi.ned womanliness. Her 
first name was the same as that of Spenser's 
mother, Elizabeth; her last name may have 
been Boyle. She brought him children and an 
apparently happy home during their few years 
together. Work on "The Faerie Queene" pro- 
gressed so rapidly that in 1596 three more 
Books — hardly equal in poetic power to the 



92 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

first three — were ready for the press. These, 
too, were taken to London and again brought 
him praise without preferment. He returned 
once more to exile, this time to destruction. In 
1598 the Irish rebellion broke out anew. No 
attempt had been made to appease the country 
by anything except force. Spenser himself was 
known to have written a paper defending the 
methods of Lord Grey. In the absence of an 
English army, he found himself alone among 
an infuriated people. Kilcolman Castle was 
attacked, plundered, and burned. One of 
Spenser's children perished in the flames. The 
rest of the family fled to London. What hap- 
pened there is uncertain. All we know is that 
in 1599 Spenser died in poverty, Ben Jonson 
says "for lack of bread." Though he had suf- 
fered in a public cause and was now recognized 
as the chief poetic glory of his age, in his ex- 
treme need he was left unhonored, deserted by 
the Crown. The Earl of Essex paid the ex- 
penses of his funeral, and at his own request he 
was laid beside Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. 
Spenser's life was one long disappointment. 
He was always poor. He received no scholarly 
honor from his University. He was crossed in 
love, and found no career immediately opening 



EDMUND SPENSER 93 

before him. For a year or two afterwards he 
was happy in the most exalted and congenial 
society of London, then for twenty years was 
obliged to live remote from friends and almost 
from civilization. He saw in Ireland military 
glory attended by savagery. In return for 
public service he was rewarded with stately 
seclusion. He won enough literary fame to 
prove that he deserved royal favor which, 
through court intrigue, somehow missed him. 
For five years he had a happy marriage, for 
six the smallest of pensions. A catastrophe 
overwhelmed him; he turned to his own people 
and met neglect with early death. It is this 
afflicted man who drew from his creative imag- 
ination a new type of poetry, a poetry of ex- 
quisite unreality, a music so magical as to lure 
us from thought and satisfy us with easeful 
dreams of gorgeous pageantry. Perhaps the 
severities of his actual life and the high romance 
of his verse are not unconnected. 

Spenser probably formed his plan of "The 
Faerie Queene" early in life. We know that 
before he went to Ireland it was sufficiently 
started to receive Harvey's unfavorable criti- 
cism. According to "The Letter of the 
Author's" it was to consist of twelve Books. 



94 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

But it was destined to be another instance of 
Spenserian disappointment. Only six Books 
were published during its author's life, and two 
Cantos of a seventh were found in manuscript 
after his death. Was a portion burned with his 
castle and child .^^ It is unlikely that in the three 
years' interval between the last publication and 
Spenser's death so prolific a writer should have 
advanced his plan by only about a thousand 
lines. There are lists of many other pieces by 
him, known to his contemporaries and un- 
known to us. But at least enough has come 
down to us to satisfy most readers. "The 
Faerie Queene" alone measures 39,000 lines, 
about four times "Paradise Lost," twice "The 
Ring and The Book," and half as long again 
as the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" together. 

Spenser's genius seems to require space. 
He liked the long line, the long stanza, the long 
Canto. Neatness and pithy sayings belong to 
a different type. His romantic verse, though 
called by himself "historical," has as little 
relation to orderly narrative as that of Ariosto 
or Tasso who, he says in his "Letter," were his 
models. His poetry is, like music, rather an 
affair of sound than of sense and contains 
within itself small provision for limitation, as 



EDMUND SPENSER 95 

is also the case with the inordinate works of 
his two masters. Several English poets in whom 
this musical emphasis is strong, like Shelley 
and Swinburne, have shown a similarly dan- 
gerous fluency. Only rarely, as in Milton and 
Tennyson, has a highly sensitive ear been at- 
tended by intellectual insistence on compact 
form. Excellencies are not altogether com- 
patible. We are wise if we discern clearly the 
kind offered by each poet, if we accept it grate- 
fully, and uncomplainingly turn elsewhere for 
worthy qualities of a different type. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 

In "The Faerie Queene," Bk. ii, C. 6, well illustrates 
Spenser's luxuriance, ease, and lulling power. Stanzas 
2 and 32 of this canto contain no full stop. A beautiful 
employment of a single stop is in Stanza 15. Stanza 13 
shows a species of link-verse, where the close of one line 
prompts the beginning of another. The fragmentary- 
cantos of Bk. VII, "Of Mutabilitie," especially the two 
stanzas of Canto viii, are among the weightiest ever 
written by Spenser. Good examples of personified Vices 
are Envy, Bk. i, C. 4, St. 30-33, and Mammon, Bk. ii, 
C. 7, St. 3. 

"The Epithalamion " should be read entire, and also 
the "Hymn in Honor of Beauty," expressing Spenser's 
Platonism. 

In "Muiopotmos," lines 145-208, there is a passage in 
ottava rima of peculiar grace. 

"Colin Clout's Come Home Again" has much bio- 
graphical material presented in pastoral form. 

As an example of Rhyme Royal a single magnificent 
stanza of "The Ruins of Time," lines 246-253, may serve. 



IV 

George Herbert 



IV 

GEORGE HERBERT 

We have now before us in clear outline two 
contrasted types of poetry, the realistic and 
the idealistic. All around us is a miscellaneous 
moving world, and it will be one of the offices 
of poetry to exliibit that world. The realist 
will therefore make accuracy and vividness his 
tests of excellence and will merely inquire how 
completely the men and women about him 
present themselves on his pages. The natural 
form of his art will be the narrative. On the 
other hand, the idealist will always feel that 
whatever is distinctive of poetry lies beyond 
the actual. The poet's work is not reproduc- 
tion. He should conceive a more spacious and 
noble world behind the one we know. In nature 
there are no moral standards. In her, too, 
everything is individual. A world of this irra- 
tional sort needs to be allegorized. The poet 
should deal with the general, especially with 
the worthy and unworthy. Let him not hesi- 
tate to speak of glorious dreams and stately 
impossibilities. Everything, in short, which 



102 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

will help to remove us from our petty existence 
will be proper matter for poetry. 

Here then are two opposed ideals. But how- 
ever opposed, both really enter into all poetry. 
To some extent every poet is both a realist and 
an idealist. In offering a preliminary defini- 
tion of poetry, I called it a fragment of reality 
seen through a temperament. It has a realistic 
basis and an idealistic superstructure; and the 
farther it moves in the idealistic direction, the 
more poetic will it appear. Rightly is Spenser 
counted the poet's poet, for in him we see the 
extreme to which poetic idealism can be carried. 
We must not then discharge either of these 
ideals but may look to see them repeated, in 
varying degrees and combinations, throughout 
the long line of English poetry. 

But why cannot these two types be counted 
sufficient.? How did it happen that immediately 
after Spenser's exquisite work was completed, 
it appeared antiquated and was succeeded 
by a new and hostile type? It was because 
poetry, oddly enough, had hitherto overlooked 
an important factor of experience, namely the 
poet himself. Chaucer revealed himself only 
incidentally and was not primarily concerned 
with other persons as selves. He never dis- 



GEORGE HERBERT 103 

sected motives, studied aspirations, laid bare 
the waywardness and contradictions which 
lurk in the interior of each of us. He merely 
set down on his pages what can be externally 
observed. Nor did Spenser in his musical 
pageant exhibit his own soul. Yet that, after 
all, is the subject which presses most closely for 
expression. Within himself the poet might 
well find the whole material of his verse, and to 
that material the new type of poetry addresses 
itself. 

To poetry of this subjective sort Dr. Johnson 
has blunderingly given the name "metaphysi- 
cal." He knew little of philosophy, particu- 
larly of metaphysics, and probably used the 
word metaphysical merely to indicate some- 
thing dark and mysterious. Still, he is on the 
right track, even if he does not put his finger 
on the precise point. These new writers are 
philosophic, that is they are studying the 
mind of man, the individual mind. They seek 
to examine their own moods and accurately to 
report them. Their true title would therefore 
be the psychological poets, inasmuch as they 
are occupied with the '^vxv or soul of man. 
But it is unwise for a single writer to try to 
change the usage of a century. Having made 



104 FORI^IATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

this protest, I shall generally employ the estab- 
lished designation. It will be understood that 
the men we are now to consider are observers 
no less than Chaucer, but observers of their 
inner life. They watch the moods which in the 
soberest of us chase one another with bewilder- 
ing speed and they record them with insistent 
accuracy. That very accuracy it is, and not 
vagueness, which makes their poetry often 
difficult to comprehend. I believe we shall best 
understand their work, and mark its contrast 
with what had gone before, if we examine the 
importance they attach to love, religion, and 
the intellect. 

Of course love-poems have always been writ- 
ten. Love we might call the universal theme of 
poetry. Almost all the motives of life are 
summed up in the attempt to merge one's in- 
complete self with the admired object of one's 
desire. But the cool elaborate way in which 
such forthgoing was treated by the poets of this 
time deserves notice.. From Petrarch's Italy 
came the fashion of a serial study of the stages 
in the advance of the lover toward his lady. 
Neither she nor her lover's passion is shown to 
us as a whole, but rather in dissected details. 
Successive sonnets disclose the fii'st approach. 



GEORGE HERBERT 105 

tlie survey of her face, the paralleling of her 
beauty with everything imaginable; what was 
the first blind impulse toward her and what 
the many subsequent vacillations, the slightly 
greater nearness from day to day, her general 
coldness and occasional kindness, the lover's 
sense of unworthiness, his abasement, despair, 
jealousy, desolation through absence, and his 
final unbelievable reward. 

No one of these phases of love is unusual. 
Poets before and since the sixteenth century 
have sung them all. But the systematization 
and conscious analysis of them became a set 
poetic theme for the first time in England dur- 
ing the last years of Elizabeth. We might 
name that theme the Lover's Progress and 
compare it with the standard theme of paint- 
ing, the Virgin and Child. Each new painter 
takes up the theme of the Nativity and works 
upon it, regardless of whether he has ever felt 
sympathy for motherhood or childhood. It is 
a set pattern which he, as an apprentice, must 
elaborate. Just so did the poets accept the 
theme of the Lover's Progress, which had trav- 
elled from Italy through France to a rather 
belated arrival in England. Of course it was 
not exactly the Petrarchan series of sonnets 



106 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

that was reproduced in England; but it was at 
least "an echo of it in the north wind sung." 
Sidney first called attention to the great theme. 
In his magnificent series of sonnets to Stella 
all the stages of love's course are worked out 
in detail. The only point, as it seems to me, in 
which the Stella series differs from the many 
which followed it is its particularity. Sonnet 
after sonnet in this series strikes one as pro- 
ceeding from that individual person, Sir Philip 
Sidney, as relating to Penelope Devereux, and 
as inapplicable to any other pair. 

Now, that is not the case in the great mass 
of love-sonnets produced in England at this 
time. Between 1591 and 1597 Sir Sidney Lee 
calculates that more than two thousand ap- 
peared, usually in groups. But there is little 
in them that is specific. For the most part they 
show no ardent passion in him who writes. 
They are literary exercises on a conventional 
theme. We have seen how it is the tendency of 
all idealistic work which falls under the influ- 
ence of Spenser to deal with the general. But 
will men be contented to continue such an 
artificial method, to go on reporting the most 
vital of our passions in a standardized way? 
Will not some one arise to shatter the decorous 



GEORGE HERBERT 107 

exhibit and set down the facts of his passionate 
experience in all their tumultuous reality? 
That was to be the work of John Donne, to 
tell of human moods as they veritably exist. 
He approaches love from a point of view op- 
posed to that of Spenser. For Spenser himself 
produced a sonnet sequence, the "Amoretti," 
of precisely the regular pattern. Smoothly 
and pleasingly the verses run, with no indica- 
tion of individual character or individual ardor. 
But Donne, not only in sonnets, but in lyrics 
of wide variety, pours forth his emotion with 
barbaric frankness. Naturally when one under- 
takes to paint passion in the precise color of 
individual experience he may be pushed far 
toward coarseness. Donne does not hesitate. 
His is a complex nature, involving all that 
characterized the later Renaissance — its au- 
dacity, its mystic piety, its forceful intellec- 
tualism, its love of adventure, and of all that 
is bizarre. 

Here then we see a conception of love 
antagonistic to the generalities of Spenser and 
the fashionable sonnetteers, one absorbed in 
individual experience. Such a change does not 
come on a sudden. The germs of it have long 
been working in England. The drama has 



108 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

arisen, in which characters present themselves 
contrasted with one another, not in the Chau- 
cerian way by mere diversity of outward con- 
duct. In the drama is heard the clash of inner 
motives. We see one man stirred by influences 
which do not appeal to another. 

About the same time too a second influence 
appeared in England emphasizing still more 
strongly the worth of the personal life. A new 
religious spirit was abroad. We have seen how 
the Lollards under Wiclif shook the kingdom 
in the age of Chaucer. More penetrating still 
was the influence of Puritanism. We must not 
think of this as the doctrine of a group of sec- 
taries, split from the Established Church. At 
this time it affected the whole body of the peo- 
ple, appealing to men about in proportion as 
they were persons of large mind and devout 
spirit. The essence of Puritanism is this: it 
insists on the presence of the individual soul 
before its maker. To God alone I am respon- 
sible; to no one else. To the state .^^ It is some- 
thing external. My neighbor's welfare? Not 
primarily. Each is accountable for his own 
soul. By what I am in myself I stand or fall. 

Now, certainly religion was not born with 
Puritanism, nor has it ever been confined to 



GEOUGE HERBERT 109 

these limits. The Cathohc Church in England 
was for ages the guardian of duty, devoutness, 
and learning. In Spenser we see how large a 
portion of the field of religion may be included 
within Protestant, but not Puritan, bounds. 
Spenser felt allegiance to the Queen, to his 
country, to chivalry, to his own honor. But 
has he ever expressed a sense of his personal 
tie with God.'^ No, for him religion was not so 
much an individual as a social affair, expressing 
the union of all God's people in common en- 
deavors, in arduous and beautiful aims. The 
Puritan conceives something different from 
this and something more fundamental, how- 
ever one-sided. His is a personal religion. He 
hears a call of God within his own soul. It is a 
strangely paradoxical call, for it summons us 
to lay aside our own will and let the will of God 
possess us. We are incomprehensibly to lose 
ourselves in Him. Yet only by doing so do we 
realize ourselves. When one first hears of that 
arrest of the individual will which Puritanism 
demands one might naturally suppose the 
Puritans would be a feeble folk, lacking in the 
energy necessary for practical life. Cromwell's 
Ironsides refute that fancy. The subordination 
of the individual will puts one on the path of 



110 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

power. When I reflect on what I am, I see that 
I am I only in so far as I go forth to join what 
is beyond me. Then I become somewhat; 
otherwise, my life is fragmentary and feeble. 
Evidently then love and religion are hardly to 
be distinguished. Just as the lover wishes to 
empty himself of all that is his and merge him- 
self fully with the loved one, so the soul in the 
presence of God, feeling its smallness, seeks to 
detach itself from its own will and fill itself 
with the will of God. Rehgion is only love on a 
large scale. 

If comprehending these matters of inward 
experience is difficult for ourselves, how greatly 
the difficulty is increased when we try to ex- 
press them to others. Each of us is a unique 
personality. What is going on in me now is 
going on in none of my readers, probably has 
never gone on before. Could I then report my 
present mood with exactitude, it would not 
repeat itself in my reader's mind. To under- 
stand it, he would need to depart from his own 
experience and enter imaginatively into another 
Hfe. No wonder then the psychological poets 
are thought to express themselves darkly. 
Their task is a far harder one than that of those 
whose graceful verse offers a general beauty 



GEORGE HERBERT 111 

to all who read. These men would get the 
mood of their unique souls transferred with 
utmost precision to other minds. But love and 
religion, their themes, are not fitted for such 
transfer. They are specific, individual, inca- 
pable of common report. To accomplish any- 
thing one must use comparisons, find analogies 
and, searching through all the world, piece out 
one partial illustration by another. He who 
would comprehend such verse must indeed be 
of an energetic tem.per. 

Naturally, then, a new attitude is taken by 
these psychological poets toward the intellect. 
We have seen how slight is Spenser's intellec- 
tual appeal. He would hypnotize us, throw us 
into a condition where we cease to think and 
are merely lulled into some general mood as 
appropriate to one man as to another. With 
him poetry goes far toward music, becoming 
inarticulate, unindividual. Donne and his fol- 
lowers revolt against all this. They are stout 
individualists and delight in snubbing this 
mystical view of verse with harsh sounds and 
crabbed intellectualities. They delight in 
thinking and force us to think. Novelty, fresh- 
ness, surprise — yes, difficulty itself — is val- 
ued by the psychological poet. He wanders far 



112 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

in search of strange means for interpreting his 
strange soul. 

Such is the new type of poetry, a poetry of the 
inner Hfe, veracious, intellectual, individualistic, 
energetic. By it an important range of emotion 
is opened to English expression which had hith- 
erto passed unobserved. Rightly too does it 
choose its means and set them in antithesis to 
those of Spenser. His "linked sweetness long 
drawn out" it puts away. Music is felt to be 
dangerous. The new verse is rugged and jar- 
ring. Instead of Spenser's inwoven sentence, 
knitted together with antique words and per- 
fumed with magical associations, it uses a 
rough language of hints, ejaculations and irreg- 
ular constructions, where words of the day are 
brought into service, though often with novel 
meanings. A poem seems intended rather for 
the writer than the reader. Force is sought, 
not elegance. Precision is prized, but ingenuity 
also. If we attempt to run rapidly through half 
a dozen lines, some intellectual puzzle is pretty 
sure to block our way. Alliteration and tone 
color are not much regarded. They are sen- 
suous affairs, useful chiefly for impressing a 
reader. Puns, conceits, far fetched relation- 
ships of thought, unusual metres, indicate the 



GEORGE HERBERT 113 

alertness of the writer's mind. And these char- 
acteristics of the metaphysical poets are by no 
means accidental. They spring directly from 
their realistic individual aim. 

Who are these men? Donne, Herbert, 
Vaughan, Crashaw, Quarles, Traherne, per- 
haps Cowley. Each one of them varies the 
characteristics I have named, emphasizing 
some, subordinating others; but all, according 
to their several aptitudes, join in developing a 
type of poetry which ever since has been among 
the precious possessions of our literature and 
has been reproduced in almost every age. 

If I were quite free in bringing this new 
poetry before my readers, I should naturally 
choose John Donne as its representative. He 
is the originator of the school and its greatest 
genius. Through all its members we trace his 
influence. But I turn from him to his pupil, 
George Herbert, for two reasons: first, the per- 
sonal one, that, bearing Herbert's name, I 
have had him as a companion throughout my 
life and have studied him elaborately; and 
secondly^ that I despair of making Donne 
intelligible within any brief compass. He is 
probably the most difficult writer in the Eng- 
lish language. All the perplexing tendencies of 



114 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

his group he shows in extreme form. His 
strange verses were not made to be listened to 
or hastily caught from an interpreter. They 
require at least three readings before they can 
be understood. To get their intimate charm 
we must brood over them, and even commit 
them to memory. Herbert's nature is less com- 
plicated and the range of his verse narrower. 
It deals exclusively with religious love and 
attacks the lower outbursts of passion so fre- 
quent in Donne. In one respect he differs from 
all the other members of his group. He is a 
conscious artist and has a strong sense of 
orderly poetic form. His small body of verse 
he revised continually, in order to bring it to 
that beauty which he loved and which he felt 
its subject to demand. Yet, notwithstanding 
superior technical excellence, he fully repre- 
sents most of the tendencies of the meta- 
physical school. He has their aggressive intel- 
lectualism, their audacity of diction, their 
absorption in the inner life, thorough-going 
individualism, wide-ranging allusion, candor, 
exactitude, and tenderness. With Donne his 
relations were close. A personal connection 
between them had been formed while Herbert 
was a mere boy, and the influence of the older 



GEORGE HERBERT 115 

man attended Herbert throughout life. If we 
knew of no personal contact of the two, but, 
being acquainted with Donne's verse should 
open a volume of Herbert's, we should at once 
recognize the master's guiding hand. I select 
then the more readily accessible Herbert as 
my representative of this type. 

His life ran from 1593 to 1633; that is, he 
was born almost exactly a century after the 
discovery of America. His period is probably 
the most markedly transitional in all English 
poetry: he being born as the first Books of 
"The Faerie Queene" appeared, when Shak- 
spere was writing his poems and earliest plays, 
and dying in the year when Dryden, Locke, 
and Spinoza were bom. The brief span of his 
hfe, that is, extends from the days of the high- 
est romance our literature ever knew to the 
beginning of the era of common sense. His, 
too, was a contentious time. Individualism was 
coming in like a flood and pushing aside the 
earlier chivalric collectivism. The Puritan 
ascendancy was gaining every year and deeply 
affecting literature. 

We are apt to think of Herbert as an aged 
saint, who spent a lifetime in the courts of the 
Lord, and came to find every worldly thought 



116 f UHMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

repulsive. This absurd estimate has largely 
been induced by Walton's charming romance. 
Biography was at that time in its infancy, and 
the few examples of it that occur aim at eulogy 
and stimulus rather than description. To com- 
prehend the man Herbert, all these romantic 
notions must be dismissed. He died compara- 
tively young, just under forty. Most of his 
life was spent in courts, universities, and 
among the most eminent and fashionable of his 
time. During only three years was he a priest. 
Unfortunately the romantic view of him has 
gained currency, too, through an adjective 
which early became attached to his name, 
*^holy George Herbert." That is exactly what 
Herbert was not. A holy man is a whole man, 
one who is altogether in harmony with himself 
and God. Herbert's was a divided nature. 
Opposing impulses tore him. It is these which 
bring him near to us and make him a true repre- 
sentative of psychological poetry. When he 
was dying, he handed over the meagre roll of 
his poems to a friend — for none were pub- 
lished during his life. All are private poems, 
stamped with that genuine sincerity which 
can be had only in writings not intended for 
the public eye — and said, "Here is a record 



GEORGE HERBERT 117 

of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed 
betwixt God and my soul. Let my friend Mr. 
Ferrar read it; and then if he can think it may 
turn to the advantage of any dejected poor 
soul, let it be made public; if not, let him burn 
it." Mr. Ferrar fortunately published it imme- 
diately, and it so exactly hit the taste of its 
time that a dozen editions were called for in 
half a century. We shall do it and its author 
much injustice if we withdraw our attention 
from those "Conflicts." 

The life of Herbert is most significantly 
divided into four periods: that of education, 
of hesitation, of crisis, and of consecration. 
The period of education covers the first twenty- 
six years of his life, from his birth in 1593 to his 
acceptance of the Oratorship at Cambridge in 
1619. The second, the period of hesitation, 
covers his Oratorship; that is, eight years, up 
to the death of his mother in 1627. A crisis 
period follows, in which Herbert was surveying 
himself and asking whether his Kfe was to be 
wasted. This continued for three years, from 
1627 to 1630. Then comes at last the glorious 
period of his consecration, his period as a priest. 
Obviously these periods are very unequal, yet 
each makes its special contribution to our 
understanding of him. 



118 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

His family was one of the noblest in Eng- 
land. Three earldoms were in it, the head of 
the whole clan being that William Herbert, 
Earl of Pembroke, who was one of the most 
influential nobles at the close of the reign of 
Elizabeth and during the reign of James. 
Herbert always prided himself on his aristo- 
cratic birth. The exquisite gentleman appears 
in him everywhere, both for strength and weak- 
ness. His father, belonging to the branch of 
the Herbert family which lived at Montgom- 
ery Castle in Wales, died when George was 
but four years old, and Lady Herbert became 
both father and mother to him. She was one 
of the masterful women of that age and one of 
the most admired. A dozen years after the 
death of her husband, though she had already 
ten children, she married Sir John Danvers, a 
man twenty years her junior. Nor was the 
marriage unhappy. Sir John Danvers was 
accordingly the only father Herbert ever knew, 
except his spiritual father, Donne. Donne and 
his large family had been assisted by Lady 
Herbert at a critical period of his life. Grati- 
tude and Idndred tastes drew him to her subse- 
quently, and at least three poems of his ad- 
dressed to her have come down to us. Her 



GEORGE HERBERT 119 

poetic son thus early felt Donne's influence. To 
George Herbert Donne bequeathed his seal ring. 

Herbert's position in life put him in the way 
of meeting many others who were then emi- 
nent in literature and the State. William Her- 
bert, the head of his house, has been believed 
by many to be the mysterious "Mr. W. H." to 
whom Shakspere's Sonnets are inscribed. Cer- 
tainly it is to him that the first folio of Shak- 
spere's plays is dedicated. Possibly, therefore, 
Herbert may have seen Shakspere. While he 
was Orator at the University Milton was a 
student there. When Lord Bacon in 1625 
published certain Psalms which he had trans- 
lated into verse, he dedicated them to Herbert 
as the first of his time "in respect of divinity 
and poesy met." 

Leaving Westminster School in London in 
1610, Herbert entered Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge. The same year, he being at the time 
seventeen, he addressed two sonnets to his 
mother which are of extreme significance. In 
them and an accompanying letter he lays 
down a programme for his life. He will become 
a poet, a poet of love. That is the only worthy 
theme, he declares. But he will be nothing 
like the fashionable poets. They have de- 



120 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

graded the sacred passion, "parcelling it out" 
to one and another person. That is to empty 
love of all meaning. The only way in which it 
can be understood is to view it in full scale, 
drawing God and the human soul together. 
Herbert will therefore write nothing but reli- 
gious verse and so will manifest love unlimited. 
With this purpose Herbert went up to the Uni- 
versity. To that purpose he remained true, 
becoming — if we except Robert Southwell — 
our first purely religious poet. 

One other aim Herbert had for shaping his 
life, and long was the shaping deferred. From 
birth he was physically weak, with a tendency 
to consumption. His brothers were martial 
men, and this was the general inheritance of 
the family. His eldest brother, Edward, was 
that Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the founder 
of English deism, the eccentric soldier, ambas- 
sador, duellist, egotist, who wrote one of the 
most entertaining of autobiographies. Two 
other brothers were ofiicers in the army and 
navy; Henry, nearest in age to George, and 
perhaps his favorite, was Master of Revels at 
the Court. One born in such station found few 
employments open. He could not engage in 
trade. He must enter either the army, the 



GEORGE HERBERT 121 

Church, or the Civil Service. Herbert's mother 
early saw that he was of too feeble a frame to 
serve in the army or probably in the State. 
She dedicated him, therefore, to the Church. 
Herbert accepted the proposed career without 
question, and soon an association of ideas be- 
came fixed in his mind, uniting the thought of 
being a priest with that of being an upright 
man. Whenever secular affairs interested him, 
as they naturally did through most of his life, 
he counted himself cut off from God. When- 
ever higher moods were on, he was all eager 
for the priesthood. 

He took his Bachelor's degree when he was 
twenty and remained at the University to 
study divinity. Being, however, already noted 
as something of a connoisseur in words, and 
skilled in Latin and Greek as well as English, 
he undertook also some teaching in rhetoric. 
In these pleasant employments and agreeable 
surroundings year by year went by and brought 
him no nearer to the priesthood. Finally the 
Oratorship of the University fell vacant. In it 
Herbert saw something much to his liking. 
He aspired to it. Fortunately we have a letter 
from him replying to a question a friend had 
asked, whether the Oratorship was quite com- 



122 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

patible with aiming at the priesthood. He 
thinks it is, for it only defers that purpose a 
httle; and besides, the Oratorship is the finest 
post in the University. The Orator sits above 
everybody at table, receives all distinguished 
visitors, writes the letters of the University, 
and has in addition a very pretty salary. 

He received the appointment in 1619 and 
held the office for eight years. The suspended 
section of Herbert's life which follows I have 
called his period of hesitation. In it his double- 
mindedness is striking. Certainly he will be a 
priest. He has never intended anything else, 
a priest and a poet. But hurry .f* Why should 
one hasten such a career .f* There are many 
good things by the way. Even Walton records 
that during his oratorship *'he was seldom at 
Cambridge unless the King was there, and then 
he never missed." Herbert loves stately cere- 
monials, fine clothes and manners, whatever 
of beauty the world can show. That is one side 
of him. He is a man of the Renaissance, sensi- 
tive to all the glories of earth and exulting in 
them. But there is another side, just as genu- 
ine. When we notice the strength of one of 
these two sides of Herbert, we are apt to imag- 
ine the other feeble or unreal. That is not the 



GEORGE HERBERT 123 

case. It is to misunderstand Herbert as a man, 
and quite to miss the type of his poetry of the 
inner life, if we fail vo give credit to discordant 
elements in him. His purpose of allegiance to 
God, taking the form of entering the priest- 
hood, is a positive passion, however long he 
loiters by the way. 

In 1625 King James died. Herbert had 
hoped to climb, like the preceding Orator, into 
some public office. He dreamed of becoming 
Assistant Secretary of State. The King's death 
destroyed these hopes. A year later Bacon 
died. Worse still, in 1627 died that mother 
who had never ceased to guide him, who had 
fixed the plan of his life, and had not seen that 
plan fulfilled. Herbert was overwhelmed. His 
health was poor at the time, and mental con- 
flicts made it v/orse. He resigned the Orator- 
ship, left the University where he had lived for 
seventeen years, retired to his brother Henry's 
country home, and there passed through what 
I have called his "crisis." 

A record of this crisis he has left us. Life 
was slipping away, with nothing accomplished. 
How was it all to end.? In a single section of my 
edition of his poems I have brought together 
the pathetic group of those that paint this 



124 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

struggle. We hear him now expressing delight 
in the world and asking how he can possibly 
leave it, now pouring forth eager longings to 
be fully a child of God, now doubting his fit- 
ness for that exalted life. After two or three 
years of this self-scrutiny, search for health, 
and efforts to reinstate his early resolve, he met 
Jane Danvers and married her, Walton says, 
three days after their fijst meeting. I question 
the tale, for she was a near relative of Herbert's 
stepfather and lived but a few miles from his 
brother's house. Yet even if the story is in- 
exact, it well illustrates Herbert's headlong 
temper. He says himself that people "think 
me eager, hot, and undertaking. But in my 
prosecutions slack and small." We may per- 
haps say that he was of so hesitating a disposi- 
tion, so prone to delay, that finally he would 
act on some small impulse, and suddenly im- 
portant issues would be closed. It was in this 
way that at last he entered the priesthood. 
The Earl of Pembroke invited him to Wilton 
House to meet Archbishop Laud, who was at 
the time a visitor there. Laud remonstrated 
with him over his long delay. Walton says 
Herbert sent for a tailor the next day and was 
measured for his canonical clothes. 



GEORGE HERBERT . 125 

Herbert entered the priesthood in 1630, at 
the age of thirty-seven, and spent in it the last 
three years of his brief life. At first he found 
great happiness in it. He had at length made 
a reality of a lifelong dream. There could be 
no more discontent. He might now possess a 
united mind. But the little parish which the 
Earl of Pembroke gave him at Bemerton, be- 
tween Wilton and Salisbury, contained only 
a hundred and twenty people, men, women and 
children. For many years Herbert had been 
living in the full tide of the bustling world, with 
the most intellectual men of that world as his 
companions. Now he found himself shut up 
to a small group of illiterate rustics. He tried 
to develop all the possibilities of his office, and 
in his beautiful notebook, "A Priest to the 
Temple," has left an elaborate study of what 
the country parson can do and be. He kept 
his intellectual interests alive with this book, 
with writing far more verse than formerly, 
and with frequent visits to the organ in Salis- 
bury Cathedral. But after all, he could not 
help wondering whether such a life was what 
God and he had intended. This disposition 
to doubt was much increased as consumption 
pressed him harder. Of this disease he died in 



126 FORAL\TIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

1633. Had he died three years earlier, we 
should never have known him, or at most 
should have found his name mentioned some- 
where as that of an elegant dilettante from 
whom contemporaries expected much, but who 
left only a dozen or more Latin and Greek 
pieces of slender merit and a few English verses 
on ecclesiastical subjects. It is chiefly Bemer- 
ton with its enforced loneliness, questionings, 
revolts, and visions of completed love which 
made Herbert an example of all that is best in 
the metaphysical poetry of the inner hfe. In 
three poems — the long "Affliction," *'Love 
Unknown," and "The Pilgrimage" — Herbert 
traces at different periods the course of his 
infirm and disappointed life. The shortest of 
them, and perhaps the obscurest, \\Titten near 
its end, is the most fully confessional and 
poignant. 

It will be seen how truly such a divided and 
introspective life typifi.es the age which pro- 
duced it. Donne and his followers are no acci- 
dent. They sum up in artistic form the ques- 
tioning tendencies of their time. In few other 
periods of Enghsh history has the English 
people believed, acted, enjoyed and aspired so 
nearly like a single person as during the first 



GEORGE HERBERT 127 

three quarters of the reign of Elizabeth, For- 
eign dangers welded the nation together. The 
Queen, her great ministers, and the historical 
plays of Shakspere, set forth its ideals of orderly 
government. Spenser's poem consummated its 
ideals of orderly beauty, as did Hooker's 
"Ecclesiastical Polity" those of an orderly 
Church. Men in those days marched together. 
Dissenters, either of a religious, political, or 
artistic sort, were few and despised. But with 
the Stuart line a change, long preparing, mani- 
fested itself. In science, Bacon questioned 
established authority and sent men to nature 
to observe for themselves. In government, 
the King's prerogative was questioned, and 
Parliament became so rebellious that they 
were often dismissed. A revolution in poetic 
taste was under way. Spenser's smooth strains 
and bloodless heroes were being replaced by 
the jolting and passionate realism of Donne. 
The field of human interest, in short, was be- 
coming more and more an internal one; the 
individual soul and its analysis calling for much 
attention from its anxious possessor. 

In choosing Herbert to represent this intro- 
spective poetry we must acknowledge that he 
stands outside his school in one important 



128 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

respect, in orderliness and brevity. No other 
member of his group has his artistic feeling. 
Their poems are usually a tangled growth, 
developed rather to ease the unrest of the 
writer than to convey objects of beauty to a 
reader. Some promising situation attracts the 
poet's attention and he begins to write, wan- 
dering wherever thought or a good phrase 
leads, playing about his subject till he and his 
readers have had enough. Beginning any- 
where, he ends nowhere. Where, too, no plan 
controls, there is likely to be excessive length. 
From such formless composition Herbert turns 
away. All his work has structural unity. He 
knows when to stop. Each poem presents a 
single mood, relation, or problem of divine 
love, and ends with its clear exposition. His 
poems are at once short and adequate. Out of 
his hundred and sixty-nine nearly a hundred 
have less than twenty-five lines each; only four 
exceed one hundred and fifty. Within these 
narrow bounds the theme is fully and economic- 
ally developed. We feel it is not he who directs 
its course; he is merely responsive to the shap- 
ing subject. Accordingly any set of Herbert's 
verses conveys such singleness of impression 
as is rarely found among his contemporaries. 



GEORGE HERBERT 129 

But while he thus lacks one common, though 
undesirable, trait of his school, he may well 
serve as its representative. Like the rest of 
them, he fixes his gaze on himself alone and 
introspects the working of a single soul. Like 
them he finds complications and paradoxes 
there and amuses himself with them, while still 
retaining our belief in his sincerity'' and earnest- 
ness. With him as with them energetic and 
unusual thought is a delight, and nothing 
pleases him more than to stuff words with a 
little more meaning than they can bear. And 
lilie them he surprises his reader with sudden 
turns of sweet and tender simplicity, imbedded 
in a crabbed context. 

In technical matters, too, he is substantially 
in accord with them. While all his lines are 
rhymed, he employs imperfect rhymes freely, 
alliteration and vowel color rarely. His work- 
ing foot is the iambic, in which rhythm all but 
eleven of his poems are written, these eleven 
being trochaic. He has no blank verse, Alex- 
andrine, or "fourteener." He has seventeen 
sonnets, but confines himself to the Shak- 
sperean form or to one peculiar to himself. He 
does not use Spenser's stanza nor Chaucer's 
Rhyme Royal. His feeling for the texture of a 



130 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

line is much finer than that of his master, of 
whom Ben Jonson said to Drummond that 
"for not keeping of accent Donne deserved 
hanging." For each lyrical situation he in- 
vents exactly the rhythmic setting which befits 
it. Each set of emotions he clothes in individual 
garb, and only when what is beneath is similar 
is the same clothing used a second time. One 
hundred and sixteen of his poems are written 
in metres which are not repeated. In his verse 
matter and form are bound together with 
exceptional closeness. 

So much has been said in this chapter about 
Herbert as a poet of the personal life and of his 
agreement with his group in analyzing indi- 
vidual experience, that perhaps in closing a few 
words of caution are needed. These subtle 
longings, dejections, and vacillations of the 
lover of God, like similar moods reported by 
the poets of human love, are not mere state- 
ments of autobiographic fact. Undoubtedly 
they start with fact, and how large is the 
measure of that fact in Herbert's verse I have 
shown in my account of his life. But though 
seven eighths of his poems employ the word 
*'I," they do not confine themselves to per- 
sonal record. What Herbert gives us of inner 



GEORGE HERBERT 131 

experience, no less than what Chaucer gave of 
outer, is colored by the temperament through 
which it passes. Starting with a veritable fact, 
Herbert allows this to dictate congenial cir- 
cumstances, to color all details with its influ- 
ence, to eliminate the belittlements of reality, 
and so to exhibit an emotional completeness 
which may not have been found in his actual 
life. This is the work of the artist everywhere, 
to idealize reality. Herbert thus idealizes. But 
he is no mere sentimentalist, living in shifting 
feelings, and fancying that to-day God has 
withdrawn his love from him whom he yester- 
day favored. Nor yet are the poems fictitious 
which so declare him. Herbert's own experi- 
ence warrants fears which he knows are not 
peculiar to himself. They belong to love every- 
where. In them he finds subjects of sad pleas- 
ure which his empty days, disciplined mind, 
and artistic skill fashioned into forms of per- 
manent beauty. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 

Herbert's two sonnets to his mother, showing in their 
style the strong influence of Donne and announcing his 
resolve to devote himself to religious love-p>oetry, are 
quoted by Walton in his "Life" of Herbert, and I have 
included them in my edition of Herbert's Works. 

Herbert's ability to pack much matter into few words 
and, like his friend Bacon, to coin proverbial sayings, 
may be seen in any stanza of "The Church Porch." 

His piety utters itself in such poems as "The Elixer," 
"Clasping of Hands," "The Pearl," "The Glance," "The 
Second Jordan." 

"Aaron," "The Priesthood," "An Oflfermg," "Para- 
dise," "Gratefulness" "Love," show the attractions of 
the priesthood. 

One sees his divided mind in the long "Affliction," 
"The Collar," "The Answer," "The Second Temper," 
"Submission," "The Flower." 

Poems of power, which well illustrate the style and the 
man, are "Sunday," " Constancie," "Man," "Virtue," 
"Sinne," "The Method," "The Forerunners." 

Good examples of his playful intellectualism are "The 
Pulley," "Peace," "Sinnes Round," "A Wreath," 
"Mortification." 



V 

Alexander Pope 



V 

ALEXANDER POPE 

In speaking of the different philosophical atti- 
tudes of John Stuart Mill and Frederic Denison 
Maurice, an acute English critic once said that 
whenever a new idea was presented to Mill his 
immediate question was, Is it true? When 
presented to Maurice, his was, What does it 
mean? The second of these inquiries was on 
the whole, the critic thought, the more pro- 
found. A somewhat similar question attends 
the devotee of poetry. Approaching poetry in 
our youth, we are contented to ask, "Do I like 
it, does it accord with my present modes of 
feeling, do I find in it a reflection of my own 
face?" But soon such interest is discovered to 
be sentimental and enfeebling. As we grow 
older, we either discard poetry altogether or 
we approach it from a different side; that is, 
we now ask, what does it signify, what phase 
of human nature finds expression here? All 
the better if it is some phase which as yet has 
not been fully developed in ourselves. The 
important work of poetry is to broaden our 



138 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

sympathies, to enlarge our imagination, to 
lead us to view humanity in the total extent 
of its range. I hope this book may impel its 
readers in these energetic directions. Already 
my demands have been considerable. We 
have found poetry reflecting the outer world. 
We have looked upon it as a dreamland, closely 
associated with music. We have seen it as 
introspection, the individual soul standing soli- 
tary before its Maker endeavoring to compre- 
hend its varying moods as it now approaches 
and now falls away from its mighty love. Many 
of my readers will find it diflScult to conceive 
religion in the fervently individualistic way in 
which Herbert exhibits it. 
• In this chapter we consider a poet still 
farther removed from our natural sympathies. 
Here, I congratulate myself, my reader will be 
forced to exercise his imagination in a field he 
instinctively dislikes. In most of us, at least, 
Pope meets a strong adverse prejudice. We 
know that he was once a mighty sovereign, but 
believe that long ago he was rightly dethroned 
and proved to be the wearer of a tinsel crown. 
To-day he is out of fashion; and while his 
pregnant sentences still serve as proverbs, few 
think of reading him. He accordingly offers 



ALEXANDER POPE 139 

the best of opportunities for the exercise of 
that imagination on which I have been insist- 
ing. Let my readers try to bring themselves 
into the strange and somewhat repellent con- 
ditions under which Pope wrote. 

I will not call Pope one of the greatest of 
poets, but he is an essential one. Modern 
poetry could not have come into existence 
until he had shown us a section of what its 
work was to be. Call it but a section, say that 
much of it is trivial, still it is important. We 
cannot comprehend how the later poetry is 
derived from the earlier unless we have com- 
prehended his. 

How, then, can we bring ourselves into a 
cordial attitude toward a writer at once so 
necessary yet so frequently distasteful.'^ I be- 
lieve we shall do it best by giving clear utter- 
ance to the half-conscious hostile thoughts 
which are in the minds of most of us. In order 
to set Pope on high, as ultimately I hope to 
do, I will for the moment attempt to pull 
him down. I will indicate at least where his 
shortcomings lie. For these are grave and 
so obtrusive that until we have put them 
out of the way we can hardly perceive his 
merits. 



140 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

In disparaging Pope, then, let me first call 
attention to the narrow range of his subjects. 
His sympathies are meagre and do not extend 
to outward nature. One of his longer poems is 
entitled "Windsor Forest," and in that forest 
Pope grew up. Binfield, his home, is only a 
few miles distant from the village which in- 
spired Milton's "Allegro" and "Penseroso." 
But Pope is occupied in Windsor Forest less 
with trees than with men. Wordsworth thought 
there were one or two adjectives in the poem 
which show that Pope had had his eye on a 
natural object. But the poem is a human docu- 
ment, as are all Pope's. This need be no dis- 
paragement. Pope is essentially a humanist, 
and a humanist is nothing in itself disgraceful. 
But Pope's interest in men — men and women 
— hardly extends beyond that of a single time 
and place; the London of his day. Never in 
his life was he a hundred miles away from Lon- 
don, and all his thought is bounded by its 
streets. Even within it he regards only a sec- 
tion of its people. Of the so-called lower classes 
he never speaks. His concern is entirely with 
two small groups, the courtiers or politicians, 
and the literary men, the two classes in every 
community most artificial and remote from 



ALEXANDER POPE 141 

common life. And even in his dealings with 
these we must reduce his scope still more; for 
it is not their elemental passions which he 
shows, but rather their manners, spites, and 
superficialities. Nowhere in Pope do we find 
the profound hopes, loves, longings, and de- 
spairs which Herbert offers. These are cast 
away as unfit for verse. The outside of people, 
persons as they appear at an evening party, 
make up the stuff of his pages. 

In all his writing, too, a certain lack of 
originality is generally felt. Independent intel- 
lectual grasp we do not find. He is ever lean- 
ing on others. In early life it is Trumbull, 
Wycherley, Walsh, to whom he looks and whom 
he makes his guides. In his middle period it is 
Swift. In his later and greatest time he is in 
close intellectual dependence on Bolingbroke. 
During the last half-dozen years of his life, he 
formed a less worthy connection and Warbur- 
ton controls. He must always see himself 
through the eyes of somebody else and, per- 
haps by consequence, has little freshness of 
vision. The substance of his poetry is common- 
place and rarely discloses any such insight into 
life as makes us aware of what we are and 
whither the world is tending. Pope's thoughts 



142 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

are our own, merely given back to us in more 
polished form. 

In estimating, too, the degree of Pope's 
dependence on others one must remember how 
all his life was spent under the shadow of 
Dryden. Dryden had been the literary dictator 
of the previous generation, and to rival him 
in each of his many styles was the perpetual 
ambition of Pope. Dryden modernized Chau- 
cer; so did Pope. Dryden translated Virgil; 
Pope, Homer. Dryden criticized tragedy ; Pope 
poetry in general. Dryden gave us the portrait 
of Eleonora and Mrs. Kjlligrew; Pope that of 
an Unfortunate Lady and Eloisa. Dryden 
wrote a long theological plea for Protestantism 
and later one for Catholicism; Pope, one no 
less long in defence of optimistic Deism. Dry- 
den satirized MacFlecknoe; Pope, Cibber and 
Theobald. Dryden sang of Alexander's Feast; 
Pope, of St. Cecilia's Day. Once Pope ven- 
tured, in collaboration with Gay, on writing a 
play, for which he was singularly unfit. Both 
he and Dryden, though Catholics, aspired to 
the very first place in the literature of a Protes- 
tant land, and the standard verse-form of both 
is the heroic couplet, developed into its highest 
unity by Pope. There is a legend that Pope in 



ALEXANDER POPE 143 

his earlier years was taken to view the great 
Dryden, sitting enthroned in Will's Coffee 
House. At any rate, Dryden's robust hand 
never left the stooping shoulders of his sensi- 
tive little successor. 

But we must not omit one further limitation 
of Pope's poetry which holds back many of his 
readers, his lack of continuity and his monot- 
ony. Both connect themselves with the use of 
that poetic instrument of which I was just 
speaking, the closed couplet or ten-syllabled 
iambic stanza. This is the music to which 
nine tenths of his poetry is set, and it is the 
music of the bagpipes or accordion. Remember 
how almost every poem of Herbert's had its 
special measure, one springing from its subject, 
and then consider the almost mechanical form 
imposed on pretty much everything Pope offers 
us. No wonder we find such pages monotonous 
and after reading three or four of them lose 
something of our hold on the meaning. The 
brief little sections easily fall apart. No Eng- 
lish measure has less staying power, and Pope's 
couplets are beyond all others in lack of coher- 
ence. He straps together bundles of them into 
connected poems; but one of these poems, say 
the "Essay on Criticism," might about as well 



144 FORIVIATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

be read backwards as forwards. Usually if we 
study a poem of Pope's sufficiently, we can find 
a kind of plan in it; but that plan is not tight 
and obligatory. The couplets, each exquisite 
in itseK, straggle out upon the page about as 
disjointedly as they first struck the mind of 
the writer. 

These are grave indictments. When we 
have judged a poet to be petty in subject, com- 
monplace in thought, loose and monotonous in 
treatment, we have left small room for merits. 
Yet I believe I have not exaggerated nor said 
anything novel. Whoever has read Pope at all 
has felt these faults. 

But besides objections to Pope's art, others 
are justly brought against his character. Un- 
pleasing personal peculiarities obtrude them- 
selves through all his writings. He is the vain- 
est of English poets, continually talking about 
himself. Not content with giving us abundant 
autobiographical details, he insists that these 
show him to be a marvel of virtue and superior 
to every one else. Such talk is tiresome. At 
first we excuse it by supposing that in such 
passages Pope may be presenting ideals of 
what he would be rather than statements of 
what he thinks he is. But when we look up the 



ALEXANDER POPE 145 

records of his life we find that vanity filled it 
with envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness. 
His years and writings abound in quarrels. 
Many of the persons assailed we do not other- 
wise know, and they may be said to have 
acquired a certain sort of immortality by his 
very attack. But we at least know enough of 
his feuds to be sure that most of them were un- 
necessary and that a character so ready to take 
offence had serious flaws. 

Probably, too, most persons will feel a cer- 
tain insincerity in the verse and will call it 
artificial, if nothing worse. It is striking that 
about in proportion as English poetry becomes 
clear and simple, it becomes doubtfully sincere. 
Nobody questions the veracity of Donne and 
his followers. If we should take Herbert aside 
and say what a puzzling phrase that was "in 
your poem on Man. Did you mean it.^*" would 
he not answer, "Yes, and I am sorry that in 
order to state my meaning exactly, I was 
obliged to be a trifle obscure." The metaphysi- 
cal poets, in short, do not write for display, 
but for relief of their own minds. This cannot 
be said of the Queen-Anne's Men. While it is 
their special office to rationalize poetry and 
convey clear thought which may be read with 



146 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

ease, they seldom escape the suspicion of osten- 
tatious performance, Pope least of all. The 
critical studies of Dilke, Elwin, and others have 
shown conclusively that Pope's statements 
about himself cannot be trusted. He claims a 
nobler ancestry than he had; dates his poems 
earlier than they were written, in order to seem 
precocious; and when he would publish his 
letters, and yet is half ashamed to do so, he 
resorts to elaborate intrigue, pretending that 
others are surreptitiously publishing and so 
he is obliged to put them out himself. Collect- 
ing letters from his many correspondents, he 
improves their quahty by rewriting, changes 
their dates and sometimes their addresses, re- 
ferring them to a different person from the one 
to whom they were sent. Then he issues them 
as veritable originals. Pope's mind was tortu- 
ous. In his own time it was well said of him 
that he could not drink a cup of tea without a 
stratagem. 

This is the man for whom I now ask admira- 
tion. While I believe all I have said in his dis- 
praise is true, I would also recall the warning 
of an earlier chapter: we must not base our 
judgment of a poet on what is not in him, but 
on what is. When we turn, our attention away 



ALEXANDER POPE 147 

from the defects of Pope and fix it on his posi- 
tive merits, we quickly see how precious has 
been his contribution to our verse. This is 
De Quincey's estimate: "Alexander Pope, the 
most brilliant of all wits who have at any period 
applied themselves to the poetic treatment of 
human manners, to the selecting from the play 
of human character what is picturesque, or the 
arresting what is fugitive." Byron calls Pope 
"a poet of a thousand years," and many of us 
are under such obligations to him that we be- 
lieve he will have a rightful eminence so long 
as the English language endures. Let me ac- 
knowledge my own debt. My grandfather had 
a good copy of his poems. So while still a boy 
and knowing little of Pope's repute, I fell to 
reading that volume. It fascinated me. I 
turned to it again and again until I had ab- 
sorbed it into my very structure, where it has 
remained a blessing through all subsequent 
years. But how can all this be? How can one 
so repellent to many in work and character ex- 
cite also such enthusiasm? To solve the para- 
dox we must turn from his weaknesses and 
consider his strengths, at the same time keep- 
ing clearly in mind the type of English poetry 
for which he stands. 



148 FORIVIATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

Yet before fixing that type, I suppose I must 
in some degree clear his character; for so long 
as he is morally objectionable, his poetic worth 
is likely to be granted grudgingly. My first 
claim for him then shall be that he showed a 
marvellous heroism in accepting his limita- 
tions. We all have these. Each knows well how 
firmly some circumstance hems him in, cutting 
him off from doing what he would. With one 
of us it is bad health, with one poverty, with 
one lack of early training or — worse — just 
native dullness. Whatever form it takes, it 
hedges us about and prevents the full pattern 
which we feel within us from coming out. Thus 
we become soured and rebellious. Looking at 
myself in comparison with others, I feel that 
the Creator has not been fair. Had he given me 
such chances as that other man has, I certainly 
should have used them wisely, winning happi- 
ness for myself and blessing for humanity. 
Now I am small, and my littleness is not my 
fault. So most of us say when limitations press. 
Some of the wiser sort accept the facts quietly, 
go about their daily work dutifully, and try to 
be cheerful in spite of disadvantages. Occa- 
sionally a Stevenson thrills the world by show- 
ing how a man may in himself be superior to 



ALEXANDER POPE 149 

fate and defy misfortune. But of all the men I 
know, Pope, I think, met his limitations best, 
better even than Stevenson; for in Stevenson 
there is always something of the Stoic. He 
knows how bad his conditions are, but will not 
let them crush him. Magnificent! Yet Pope 
shows a wisdom higher still; he turns his very 
limitations into sources of power. It seems 
incredible that this can be done, especially 
where limitations are so enormous as those 
which beset Pope. 

He was the only son of a London linen- 
merchant who by middle life had acquired a 
fair competence — not a fortune, but a compe- 
tence — and so retired from business, moved 
out a little way from London, and took a house 
at Binfield, in the forest adjoining Windsor. 
The boy was born of parents already advanced 
in years — the mother forty-eight — and born 
a cripple. There was curvature of the spine 
and with it came subsequently almost every 
ailment that flesh is heir to. His face, notwith- 
standing the brilliant eye, showed marks of 
constant pain. Headaches were frequent and 
prevented his working for any long connected 
time. There was a disposition to asthma, and 
nervous disease in all its distressing forms was 



150 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

on him from childhood, much intensified by 
the severe studies of his youth. His distorted 
figure never attained a height of more than 
four feet. 

What prospect in fife was there for such a 
crippled child.^ Of course any active employ- 
ment was out of the question. Only one career 
lay open, a life with books. He might become 
a scholar, or rather a scholar at intervals. 
Persistence might bring learning even if con- 
tinuous study was impossible. But here the 
barbarous laws of his country intervened. His 
parents were Cathohcs, and Pope himself was 
intensely loyal. His nature was not a religious 
one. He cared little for doctrine. To be a 
Protestant would have been throughout life 
greatly to his interest, and not much against 
his inchnation. But it was not in him to desert 
an oppressed cause, nor would he put a barrier 
between himself and those he loved. In conse- 
quence he was shut out from all the great 
schools and universities of his country. Why 
not, then, join those of the Continent .'^ He was 
too frail. His health would not permit it. For 
the same reason, too, he was cut off from that 
which for many men well supplies the loss of 
university training, travel. No, Pope was 



ALEXANDER POPE 151 

hemmed in. Both nature and man forbade him 
opportunities. Most men finding themselves 
in such a case would think they did well if 
they amused themselves with books and talk 
from day to day without bringing discomfort 
on others. Who of us would have set a con- 
scious task before ourselves, one, too, so diffi- 
cult that in it the best equipped seldom suc- 
ceed, and then by the time we were twenty- 
one have arrived at acknowledged eminence? 
That is what Pope did. Obscure in birth, 
feeble in frame, forbidden education, before he 
is twelve he resolves that the world shall hear 
him and so compensate for that which he after- 
wards called "this long disease, my life." He 
did not let his limitations fret him into idle- 
ness, but used them as helps, indications of the 
paths through which he might reach power. 
Of course under such difficulties he must sys- 
tematically manage himself, think all out 
beforehand, and make up with brain what was 
lacking in physical advantage. His is a verit- 
able dedication of himself to poetry. 

He consulted friends to learn what portion 
of the poetic field was as yet unoccupied, and 
fortunately got from the admirable critic 
Walsh a magic word. Walsh told him that 



152 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

English poetry had accomplished pretty much 
everything else except "correctness," Who- 
ever could introduce that would find a place. 
We need not puzzle ourselves over the precise 
meaning of the word. Enough that, remember- 
ing how at some lucky moment a golden saying 
has enriched our life, we perceive that correct- 
ness must at least have suggested the idea of 
correcting. The metaphysical poets, the men 
of Donne's school, poured forth in profusion 
whatever came into their heads, regardless for 
the most part of lucidity, order or rule. Her- 
bert is about the only one among them who 
revised his text, and he did not do it in the 
interest of clearness. Little they cared whether 
they were comprehended. Their first thoughts 
Were their only ones. But lasting literature is 
best built out of second thoughts. If after set- 
ting down what in our first heat we think we 
have to say, we go over and correct it subse- 
quently, we may reach what Wordsworth de- 
manded of poetry, "emotion recalled in tran- 
quillity." Walsh was right in saying there had 
been little of this hitherto in English verse, 
and to it the eager boy at once addressed him- 
self. By the time he was twelve Pope had 
produced a little masterpiece in his lines on 



ALEXANDER POPE 153 

"The Quiet Life"; a translation of Horace's 
"Beatusille": 

"Happy the man whose wish and care 
A few paternal acres bound. 
Content to breathe his native air. 
In his own ground. 

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread. 
Whose flocks supply him with attire. 

Whose trees in summer yield him shade 
In winter fire. 

Blest who can unconcernedly find 

Hours, days, and years slide soft away, 

In health of body, peace of mind, 
Quiet by day, 

Sound sleep by night, study and ease 

Together mixed, sweet recreation. 
And innocence, which most does please 

With meditation. 

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown 

Thus unlamented let me die. 
Steal from the world, and not a stone 

Tell where I lie." 

That could hardly be improved, either in 
sense or sound. Let any one try to change a 
word, and he will discover how near its sim- 
plicity comes to perfection. Each line takes 
just the course it must take; and yet there is 



154 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

good reason to believe it was written in Pope's 
twelfth year. Of course he retouched it later, 
as he did all his writing. But here it stands, 
an early proof that Pope could accomplish his 
aim in spite of his limitations — yes, by their 
aid. 

Soon recognizing, too, that continuous intel- 
lectual labor was impossible for him, instead of 
rebelling he turned to that which may well be 
discontinuous. The couplet is the form of Eng- 
lish verse which can best be taken up piecemeal 
and by piecemeal polished. Pope devoted him- 
seK to it. He distributed scraps of paper about 
his house, had bits even at his bedside — for 
his sleep was never more than intermittent — 
and whenever a clever couplet occurred to him, 
down it went on paper. These papers were then 
gathered, the coherences among them noted, 
and they were gradually fashioned into a poem. 
There is something pathetic in what I urged a 
while ago to his disparagement, that most of 
his poems are not closely knit. Nature forbade 
that. But Pope, instead of resenting it, made 
fragments to shine. He carried the closed 
couplet to the utmost point of refinement it 
was ever to reach in England. He regarded it 
as a veritable stanza and accordingly thought 



ALEXANDER POPE 155 

that, as in any stanza, the sense should be 
tolerably complete within its bounds. Already 
this tendency to shut up the couplet within 
itself had appeared in Dryden and Waller; but 
it is Pope who gave that final touch which made 
the couplet really adequate to itself. In com- 
pacting it thus, he clearly understood the dan- 
gers it would meet. The verse might easily 
become monotonous, just one repeated beat. 
But what subtlety he has used for avoiding 
this! Reading his verses carelessly, we often 
fail to notice how neatly he has shifted his 
pause — the pause, I mean, midway in the 
line, the csesura — sometimes drawing it nearer 
the beginning, sometimes delaying it till toward 
the end, readjusting it with every refinement 
so that successive lines may not be too similar. 
In this way he introduces a delicate music into 
his verse and brings out all the limited capac- 
ity of the closed couplet. 

No wonder that such a man who in early life 
saw so clearly the literary tendencies of his 
age, soon attracted the attention of notable 
men of letters. He speedily became recognized 
as the prince of them all. This cripple, this 
tradesman's son, this youth hampered by 
feeble health and fragmentary education, 



156 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

makes English literary and political life bow 

down to him as a great power. What a feat to 

accomplish in earliest manhood! Well might 

he afterwards exultingly say, 

"Yes, I am proud, I must be proud to see 
Men not afraid of God afraid of me." 

If now Pope's character is partially cleared, 
if we see that he is entitled to respect as a man, 
that his energetic life has in it much which is 
pathetic, and stimulating to ourselves, we may 
perhaps be prepared to examine dispassion- 
ately Ihe special contribution he made to our 
poetry. We shall best begin to do so by ob- 
serving that he is our first man of pure letters, 
our first professional poet. 

Every writer before Pope had taken poetry 
as a collateral employment, in connection with 
days devoted to something else. Chaucer, as 
we have seen, was a man of the court, a soldier, 
a foreign envoy. Spenser was one of the con- 
querors of Ireland. Herbert was a courtier, a 
teacher at the University, a country minister. 
These all found time for poetry also; but they 
did not devote themselves to it. One greater 
than they all attempted this, Milton. From 
earliest years he had consecrated himself to 
poetry as to a holy calling, but the exigencies 



ALEXANDER POPE 157 

of his country combined with a faltering pur- 
pose to check him. During thirty of the middle 
years of his Hfe, suspending poetic employ- 
ment, Milton became a political pamphleteer 
and Secretary to the Commonwealth. No, it is 
not incorrect to say that Pope is the first among 
our literary men to give himself up through an 
entire life whole-heartedly to poetry. This is 
what the musician, the painter, the sculptor 
do as a matter of course with their exacting 
arts. But perhaps some of my readers will not 
approve such a method in poetry. They may 
call it artificial, think the poet had better re- 
main something of an amateur. If he engages 
only in his art he may not feel the full tides of 
life. Probably Pope never felt them fully. 
Under the conditions in which he found him- 
self it was impossible to do so. But one thing 
he knew well and loved ardently, pure litera- 
ture, perfect expression. For this he was ready 
to endure hardship. And we cannot under- 
stand, certainly not enjoy, him unless we too 
know how difficult smooth-slipping sentences 
are to fashion, and so feel a corresponding 
pleasure wherever they appear. Before we can 
care for Pope we must hate all that is awk- 
ward, extravagant, or fantastic in writing, and 



158 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

highly prize lucidity, ease and lightness of 
touch. These latter difficult excellencies we 
are apt to rate as subordinate or even trivial. 
Pope gives up a life to them with entire serious- 
ness and consummately attains them. Of him 
might be said what Tennyson said of his 
Edmund, that "lucky rhymes to him were 
scrip and share, and mellow metre more than 
cent for cent." 

Thus I am led at once to point out wherein 
I regard Pope as typical and why it seemed to 
me that in presenting half a dozen types of 
poetry, that is, the work of men who were 
really discoverers, opening to English poetry 
emotional tracts which before were closed, I 
ought to include Pope. The ideal he followed 
is ordinarily spoken of as the "classical ideal" 
and his school the "Classical School." No 
label is accurate. One man covered by it 
swings to the right, another to the left of its 
meaning, and much that interests Pope stands 
outside classicism altogether. Still, the word 
may guide us to his type, only we must not 
suppose that the English Classicists imitate 
Greek writers. The word has passed through 
France, and French standards were now be- 
coming those of England too. Dry den had felt 



ALEXANDER POPE 159 

their attraction. Pope felt it still more and 
found it still nearer akin to his own genius. For 
how neat the French mind is! How it abhors 
the "too much" and keeps itself within bounds. 
The ancient Greek in his inscription on Apol- 
lo's temple — fi-q^kv dyav "not too much" — 
taught respect for the limit. The finite is the 
field for man, not the infinite. The Gothic, 
Northern, or German spirit, on the contrary, 
aspires gropingly after the infinite. It never 
grasps it, of course, but we admire its mighty 
reach. It may be that those who restrict them- 
selves to the finite are in danger of remaining 
small, but some are content to be so if only 
they may be precise. 

Just before Pope's time the need had been 
felt of such sober, rational, and corrective influ- 
ences as the neo-Classicists upheld. In all the 
countries of western Europe an era of social 
good sense was following one of enthusiasm 
and turbulent egotism. It affected politics no 
less than literature. Pope was born in 1688, the 
child of a revolution which was worked out by 
sensible constitutional means, following at a 
distance of only forty years one of the most 
tumultuous outbreaks which the world had at 
that time known. Good sense and compromise 



160 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

were in Pope's blood. He led a much needed 
literary reaction against the disorderly writers 
who preceded him. The Metaphysical School 
had cared little for good taste, for social stand- 
ards, for neat expression. Their far-fetched 
analogies, their wild conceits, their introspec- 
tive personal gaze, their fondness for specula- 
tion and inaptitude for facts, rendered poetry 
almost unintelligible. English literature was 
overrun with a jungle growth, and some one 
was needed to cut paths through. 

This is the work of the Classicists with their 
engine of rationality. The metaphysical poets 
are irrational. They utter merely what the 
moment brings and the individual feels. But 
reason requires social adjustment. The feeling 
which springs hot from the heart of the poet 
must be tempered to meet the conditions of a 
receiving mind. That social tempering is the 
very essence of art, a difficult business, in 
which, however, we are not left without aid. 
Through all the ages men have been studying 
the best modes of approach of man to man, and 
the results of that experience are summed up 
in those laws of good taste which are embodied 
in the work of great poets and critics of 
the past. These teach us how futile a being 



ALEXANDER POPE 161 

the obscure, redundant, awkward, self-centred 
poet is. He has been unwilling to take trouble 
on himself in behalf of his neighbor. He should 
be socialized, rationalized. Most of the seven- 
teenth century was a time of extreme individ- 
ualism. Pope's age of reason lays insistence on 
social proprieties. Who will say that they were 
not needed.'* 

Yet such standards of social propriety nar- 
row in some respects the sympathies of him 
who adopts them. Enthusiasm, for example, 
is soon looked upon with suspicion, because it 
cannot be exactly explained nor fully shared. 
It isolates him who feels it, and should have 
consequently no place in literature, which deals 
with what is comprehensible by all. That sen- 
sible clarity which Addison was exhibiting in 
the essay and Locke in philosophy, it was the 
office of Pope to bring over into poetry. All 
three, purged of blind enthusiasm, move among 
such subjects and employ such language as 
cultivated gentlemen might use at a casual 
meeting. They avoid pedantry and hot emo- 
tion. They keep clear of whatever is heavy, 
obtrusive, or personal. Of course while using 
simple language, one would be glad to have his 
language shine. A clever epigram is always in 



162 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

point. It must not sprawl or show effort, as 
did those of the generation before. A brilhant 
flash will please our neighbor, without burden- 
ing him with too much thought. 

In Pope, then, perhaps we may see a sys- 
tematization of that society-verse which in 
loose and lyric fashion began with Lovelace, 
Sedley, Carew, and Rochester and has ever 
since been a valued type in our poetry. It is 
artificial, of course, and intentionally insincere, 
that is, untrue to the entire mind of the writer, 
but we should be poor indeed without it. Pope 
has written much in a more serious vein. Per- 
haps his masterpiece in this sort of Dresden 
china is his airy "Rape of the Lock." 

To what parts of life will such a method in 
its graver use be applicable.? Certainly not to 
the human interior, the soul of man. For this 
it is totally inadequate. There we are much 
swayed by irrational passions. Chiefly to the 
outside of life a poetry is confined which sets 
much store on a standard language and insists 
on what is rational in our dealings with one 
another. Poets who have been most influenced 
by conceptions of this kind incline to call them- 
selves "moral" poets, making the word refer 
chiefly to our mores or manners, the way in 



ALEXANDER POPE 163 

which personal character displays itself in out- 
ward behavior. Thus Pope writes, 

"Not in fancy's ways I wandered long, 
But stooi>ed to truth and moralized my song." 

In his early years through a wide variety of 
subjects Pope sought to entertain his readers 
with pleasing sentimentalities. But after the 
interval following his work on Homer and 
Shakspere, the great world of human conduct 
in all its picturesqueness, folly, and whimsical- 
ity opened before him, and he set himself to 
study it and teach it propriety. 

Yet neither Pope nor the later poets of man- 
ners offer us the sharply differentiated indi- 
vidual life. They deal with typical character, 
expressive of some universal principle, not with 
particular persons. Accordingly they easily 
pass over into moralizing and are not afraid of 
a stock expression. How far we have travelled 
since Pope's day! How eagerly do our young 
poets, shunning his simplicity and dreading 
a commonplace phrase, tie up their uncertain 
thoughts in knots hard to unravel. Pope's con- 
trasted aims are well expressed in one of his 
letters to Walsh: "It seems to me not so much 
the perfection of sense to say those things that 
have never been said before" — in that en- 



164 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

deavor at surprise so valued by previous poets 

■ — "as to say those things best that have been 

said oftenest." Or as he versifies the same 

thought : 

"True wit is nature to advantage dressed; 
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." 

We have no right then to demand profound 
thought from Pope. That is not what he 
sought, nor what his special circumstances 
fitted him to give. He aims at perfect expres- 
sion. He takes the ordinary thoughts of aver- 
age men and puts them with a neatness, vivac- 
ity, fullness, and terseness combined, which 
had never been seen before. Occasionally his 
desire for compact simplicity prevents the 
instantaneous seizure of his meaning. But this 
is rare. Usually he gives us the perfection of 
rhetorical verse, something between prose and 
poetry. That this was his proper sphere he 
well understood. "Verse-man or prose-man, 
term me which you will," he writes. It was to 
working within such narrow limits that all his 
industrious life was given; and it was because 
he accepted those limits that he rose to fame. 

Against them, though they are the strength 
of his poetry, we are inclined to rebel. As we 
turn his page, we probably say, "This is not 



ALEXANDER POPE 165 

what I care for most in poetry." No, indeed, 
it is not. But is it not a precious, entertaining, 
instructive ingredient of poetry .^^ Would we 
not wish to write with such brilhant simpHcity.'^ 
Could English poetry have progressed without 
these lessons on style .^^ And would not our 
literature have missed something if it had never 
been embellished with these striking pictures 
of the conduct of our ancestors.'^ I should an- 
swer all these questions in the affirmative and 
should say that any one too indolent to enter 
imaginatively into the restricted world of Pope 
will be cutting himself off from a powerful 
means of intellectual enlargement. 

Hitherto I have laid exclusive stress on the 
classical side of Pope. It is his adhesion to 
established standards of hterature and conduct, 
his valuation of criticism above spontaneity, 
his substitution of second thoughts for first, 
in short his insistence on an unclouded rational 
diction, and his skill in bringing a single im- 
portant metre to perfection, which marks his 
type and makes him a turning point in English 
poetry. But he has many collateral excellencies. 
One capable of such pithy utterance can in a 
sentence confer an immortality of honor or 
shame. And what a historian he is! Where 



166 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

else can we bring ourselves so fully into that 
strife between Whig and Tory through which 
the Protestant line of Hanover was fixed on 
the Enghsh throne and the Catholic Stuarts 
held in exile? Pope's party was defeated, but 
his comments and criticisms are the more inter- 
esting on that account. And then just because 
his attention was confined to London, and to 
its wits, fashionable ladies, and litterateurs, he 
makes us acquainted with those streets and 
people as if we too had been born among them. 
Every dozen lines of Pope brings before us 
some notable person, animated scene, or pecu- 
liar custom, long since gone. We may at first 
incline to compare his gallery of striking por- 
traits with Chaucer's variety, or with the 
groups of delightful nobodies sketched in a 
subsequent age by Crabbe and Jane Austen. 
But on reflection we see that the methods of 
painting are contrasted. The Classicist Pope 
starts with what is general in man ; these other 
writers with what is peculiar. His is an intel- 
lectual apprehension of fundamental principles 
of conduct, which his figures merely illustrate. 
His characterizations are accordingly brief 
though deep-going. The other writers I have 
named proceed by minute observation of facts. 



ALEXANDER POPE 167 

Undoubtedly their people are more vivid. I 
cannot count them more memorable, varied, 
or instructive. They suit our taste better, as 
Shakspere suits us better than Ben Jonson. 

The charge is often brought against Pope 
that he employed a poetic diction and is re- 
sponsible for the artificial phrases used by those 
who came after him. I believe this to be unjust. 
In the tentative efforts of his early period, and 
also in his translation of the Iliad, the language 
is often bookish, ornamented, and unlike that 
of the man on the street. And this is natural. 
Poets do not like to call a spade a spade, for 
they see something more in every object than 
does the passing beholder. This heightened 
dignity they sometimes try to convey by the 
use of conventional words, such as the casual 
beholder would never use; or else out of the 
language of that common man they select 
words with a sensitiveness to their precise sig- 
nificance and emotional value such as he him- 
self never possessed. The former method, as 
the easier, is apt to be followed by half-made 
poets. It was followed to some extent by Pope 
himself when learning his art, and afterwards 
by such imitators of his defects as Young, Blair, 
and Pollok. But when in his third period Pope 



168 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

has attained mastery, he uses the plainest of 
speech. Any one reading the "Moral Essays," 
"The Dunciad," the "Epistles," and "Satires" 
of Pope may well wonder not only at the plain- 
ness, solidity, and effectiveness of the diction, 
but at Pope's instinct for words that were 
destined to survive. Little in these pieces has 
become antiquated. Pope instructs us well 
how to talk strongly to-day. 

Several times in this chapter I have men- 
tioned successive sections of Pope's life. They 
are three. Taking that life as extending from 
1688 to 1744, its first period may be reckoned 
as ending with the beginning of his work on 
the "Iliad " in 1715, with the publication of his 
Collected Works in 1717, and the death of his 
father in that year, or with his settlement at 
Twickenham a year later. This is his period of 
experiment and miscellaneous verse. His period 
as a translator and editor follows; when be- 
tween 1715 and 1726 Homer and Shakspere put 
him above financial need for the rest of his life. 
His third period running from 1726 to his death 
— his "Moral" period — shows him in the 
easy command of his wealth, time, and powers, 
aphorizing on manners, criticizing conduct, and 
indulging his taste for gardening and quarrels. 



ALEXANDER POPE 169 

These roughly outhned periods, it will be seen, 
mark off literary stages rather than stages of 
personal life. Pope's life contains few events 
distinct from literature. All is subordinated to 
that great end. But those few events I may as 
well bring into connection with his literary 
development. 

I have said that his father moved to Binfield 
when Pope was but a child. Attempts were 
made in these early years to procure him edu- 
cation. From one small school or unimportant 
priest he moved each year to another. Before 
he was twelve he found the best teacher he 
ever knew, himself. A boy at home, he set 
himself to serious study of the Latin writers, a 
few of the French, and several of those of Eng- 
land, especially Dry den. The Latin Statins he 
translated into verse, often with felicity. He 
spent much time on Virgil, ever afterwards a 
favorite. Many of the Greek and Latin poets 
he read in translation, and he himself wrote 
four thousand lines of an epic on Alexander the 
Great. Early, too, he gained the acquaintance 
of several cultivated Catholic families of his 
neighborhood, and brought himself into cor- 
respondence with some of the eminent writers, 
of the generation which was just passing away. 



170 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

From them he obtained much valuable criti- 
cism and practised himself also in giving it. 
By overstraining that feeble health of his, 
Pope was able, before he was twenty-one, to 
put together a volume of Pastorals which was 
published in 1709. It fixed the attention of the 
literary world on the youth and made men 
understand that a new leader had appeared. 

But with growing fame came interference 
with study. For the next half-dozen years Pope 
was much in London literary society. He be- 
came acquainted with Addison, Swift, Gay, 
Arbuthnot, and with smaller men like Tickell, 
Philhps, and Dennis, over whose supposed 
iniquities his pen was to be long busy. Litera- 
ture was at this time largely the handmaid of 
pohtics; partisanship and strife were regular 
adjuncts of the trade. Great writers, like Swift, 
did not hesitate to accept political pay. When 
a single issue so dominated the life of the nation 
as did that of the English Crown, literature and 
politics could not be kept apart. In 1714 Queen 
Anne died. In 1715 England was invaded by 
the Pretender. From that time till the death 
of Pope and the second Stuart rising party 
spirit ran high. Other influences, too, cooper- 
ated to disorganize literature. Literary prop- 



ALEXANDER POPE 171 

erty was imperfectly guarded and unscrupu- 
lous publishers were common. While an author 
usually sold his manuscript outright, his largest 
gain often came from the great men to whom 
he dedicated or from recognition by the govern- 
ment itself. 

On the whole, through such adverse circum- 
stances Pope moved forward in his career with 
singular independence and success. He put 
forth in these years his "Pastorals," "The 
Messiah," "Windsor Forest," the "Essay on 
Criticism," the "Rape of the Lock," "Elo- 
isa," the "Unfortunate Lady," and nearly as 
much more miscellaneous verse — a prodigious 
amount, considering its quality, his health and 
his distractions — received good pay for it, 
put himself under no patron, and refused pen- 
sions proffered by the Government. But he 
was not so successful in keeping clear of petty 
squabbles. In these years quarrels were begun 
which grew steadily wider and more bitter 
till they blossomed into superb amphtude in 
the gardens of "The Dunciad." Pope's ner- 
vous constitution made him irritable, quick 
to resent a fancied slight, disparagement, or 
rivalry. He was greedy of praise, yet, like 
most of us, ashamed to acknowledge it. We 



172 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

cannot truly grant him what he claimed for 
himself, "That if he pleased, he pleased in 
manly ways." His temper was rather feminine 
than masculine, highly sensitive both for good 
and ill, not too scrupulous about petty false- 
hoods, and inclining rather to covert than to 
open agencies for accomplishing what he de- 
sired. But he had feminine affections also, 
tenderness and tenacity, a knack for knowing 
lovable people, like Gay, Garth, and Berkeley, 
or for dealing tactfully with crabbed ones Hke 
Swift. In later years he refused an honorary 
degree from Cambridge University — a proud 
distinction for one who had been kept from 
education as a boy — because no degree was 
offered also to his friend Warburton. His devo- 
tion to his indulgent father, and especially to 
his mother during her sixteen years of aged 
widowhood, was extreme. Servants lived long 
with him. When Dennis, his bitterest enemy, 
grew old and poor, friends offered him a benefit 
at Drury Lane, for which Pope wrote the pro- 
logue. Several of his quarrels were envenomed 
by scandalous attacks on his parents. While 
cases of reprehensible animosity are not diffi- 
cult to find in Pope's stormy career, on the 
whole in most of his warfare with Grub Street 



ALEXANDER POPE 173 

our sympathies go with him. He stood for lit- 
erature pure and simple, as contrasted with 
that fostered by the Government, aristocratic 
society, or mercenary booksellers. 

But I anticipate. Much of the independence 
I have been describing was deliberately planned 
and secured during the eleven years' drudgery 
of his second period, 1715-1726. It is amazing 
that a young man, httle more than twenty-five 
years old, and known to have but a slender 
acquaintance with Greek, should already have 
gained such repute as to secure him six hundred 
subscribers to a six-volume translation of the 
"Iliad," costing a guinea a volume. Counting 
what the publishers also paid, he took in about 
£5000 from the "Iliad" alone. For the 
"Odyssey" he received nearly £4000 more, 
though in this he did only half the work, letting 
out the remainder to his assistants, Broome 
and Fenton. And what a masterpiece he pro- 
duced ! Though its magniloquent sentences are 
somewhat out of the taste of our time, what 
translation of the "Iliad" shows such sustained 
poetic charm .'^ If any of us were sentenced to 
read an entire Book of the "Iliad" at a sitting, 
to what translation would we turn so soon as to 
Pope's.'* Knowledge of the language from which 



174 FORMATI\^ TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

a translation is made is immeasurably less im- 
portant tlian a knowledge of that into which. 
Bentley might well complain that Pope did not 
understand the meaning of certain words and 
phrases of Homer's, but he understood — what 
only a poet could — how to write a page that 
would carry his reader into the thick of the fight. 

When we consider the greater value of money 
in Pope's time, it is evident that the amount 
received from his Greek labors, and from the 
less important editing of Shakspere, made him 
a man of means. He was at least afl3uent 
enough to write henceforth what he pleased, to 
entertain friends agreeably, to amuse himself 
with gardening or grotto-building at Twicken- 
ham, and to be able to place a stone seat or 
obelisk wherever it gave dignity to the view. 
The charming villa where Pope spent the last 
half of his life lay on the bank of the Thames a 
dozen miles from London. Though he only 
hired it, every reader of his verse or letters has 
shared his enjoyment of it. 

It is from this third period of Pope's life, 
1726-1744, and from the gardens of Twicken- 
ham, that what is most characteristic and valu- 
able in his poetry proceeds. That is not a com- 
mon case with poets. The writing of their early 



ALEXANDER POPE 175 

and middle years is ordinarily their best. With 
advancing age imagination is apt to decay and 
their work to lack freshness. Pope's poetic 
powers developed early and were recognized 
early, but they continued, and he did not find 
the true field for his genius until his fame was 
well established. During this third period he 
devoted himself almost entirely to a species of 
writing which before his Homeric days he had 
practised but slightly. It is the satiric delinea- 
tion of character — that of others and his own 
— not realistically, but ever as illustrative of 
some fundamental principle. Beginning with a 
classification of all the tribe of fools in "The 
Dunciad," advancing in the "Essay on Man" 
to an analysis of the conditions under which 
humanity everywhere finds itself and then, 
after showing in the " Moral Essays" the pecu- 
liar temptations to which men, women, riches, 
and learning expose us, he advances to those 
delicious Horatian pieces where audacious 
satire shows an ease, compactness, and incisive 
form hardly paralleled elsewhere in English 
verse. "At every word a reputation dies," or a 
graceful compliment is fastened on a friend. 
Here Pope's power of expression reaches its 
height. The pretty banter of the Rape of the 



176 FORMiVTIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

Lock has gone on to force and pungency, with 
no loss of ease. Throughout the whole period 
we detect the influence of BoUngbroke, the 
philosophic statesman, who in 1626 had settled 
at Dawley, ten miles from Twickenham, and 
who now, after the departure of Swift to Ire- 
land, became for a dozen years Pope's guiding 
mind. He it was who first taught Pope that 
"the proper study of mankind is man," and it 
was his suggestion which prompted the Hora- 
tian Satires. With the ending of the "Satires," 
in 1738, Bolingbroke left Dawley and Pope 
wrote no more poetry except a fourth Book of 
"TheDunciad"in 1739. 

Of the remaining years of Pope when, under 
the guidance of the scheming and pompous 
Bishop Warburton, he busied himself with the 
disgraceful editing of his letters and the revision 
of his works, it is fortunately unnecessary to 
speak. Pope had matured early and early the 
restless mind, like that of Dry den's "Achi- 
tophel," 

''Fretted the pigmy body to decay 
And o'erinformed its tenement of clay." 

He died in his fifty-sixth year at Twicken- 
ham, unmarried, leaving most of his property 
to Martha Blount, who had been his friend for 
thirty years. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 

"The Messiah" shows the artificial diction with which 
Pope's work began. 

A couple of pages should be read from the "Essay on 
Criticism," in order to see Pope's early epigrammatic 
style in its extreme form. 

Read also " The Rape of the Lock," especially Part III, 
and Book I of the "Essay on Man," with the "Universal 
Prayer." Among the "Moral Essays," that on "The 
Characters of Men," and among the "Satires" the "Epis- 
tle to Arbuthnot" and that to Augustus. 

But Pope is not seen to best advantage in his continu- 
ous writing. He is dimmed by his own brilliancy. I sub- 
join, therefore, a group of fragments, chosen almost at 
random, to show how he can make common truth shine: 

Fragments from Pope 

*T is with our judgments as our watches, none 
Go just alike, yet each believes his own. 

Horace still charms with graceful negligence 
And without method talks us into sense. 

Behold the child by nature's kindly law 
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw; 
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, 
A little louder, but as empty quite; 
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage. 
And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age; 
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before. 
Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er. 



178 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid. 
Some banished lover and some captive maid. 

'T is education forms the common mind. 
Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined. 

Who shames a scribbler? Break one cobweb through. 
He spins the slight self-pleasing thread anew. 
Destroy his fib or sophistry — in vain! 
The creature's at his dirty work again. 
Throned in the centre of his thin designs. 
Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines. 

You beat your pate and fancy wit will come. 
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home. 

'T is use alone that sanctifies expense. 

And splendor borrows all her rays from sense. 

All the distant din the world can keep 

Rolls o'er my grotto, and but soothes my sleep. 

Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame. 
Do good by stealth and blush to find it fame. 

Feign what I will, and paint it e'er so strong. 
Some rising genius sins up to my song. 

My head and heart thus flowing thro' my quill, 

Verse-man or prose-man, term me which you will. 

Papist or Protestant, or both between. 

Like good Erasmus, in an honest mean. 

In moderation placing all my glory. 

While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory. 



ALEXANDER POPE 179 

Index-learning turns no student pale. 
Yet holds the eel of science by the tail. 

The Muse shall sing, and what she sings shall last. 

Codrus writes on, and will forever write. 

Even copious Dryden wanted or forgot 
The last and greatest art, the art to blot. 

The gods, to curse Pamela with her prayers. 
Gave the gay coach and dappled Flanders mares. 
The shining robes, rich jewels, beds of state. 
And, to complete her bliss, a fool for mate; 
She glares in balls, front boxes, and the ring, 
A vain, unquiet, glittering, wretched thing. 

Eternal smiles his emptiness betray. 

As shallow streams rim dimpling all the way. 

If to her share some female errors fall, 
Look in her face, and you '11 forgive them all. 

Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule? 
'T was all for fear the knaves would call him fool. 

For forms of government let fools contest, 
Whate'er is best administered is best. 

From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part. 
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art. 

Me let the tender office long engage 
To rock the cradle of reposing age, 



180 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, 
Make languor smile and smooth the bed of death. 
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye. 
And keep awhile one parent from the sky. 

On Sir Isaac Newton — 

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night. 

God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light. 



VI 

William Wordsworth 



VI 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

In this chapter we enter a new world. We have 
left the age of reason, the orderly, well-planned 
w^orld of the Classicists, and turn to one which 
has no fear of disorder, the world of the 
Romanticists. We have seen how the men who 
followed Spenser became dissatisfied with his 
witcheries. His verse was too sweet; they 
wanted a taste of the bitter. Rousing them- 
selves from Spenser's hypnotic spell, they 
eagerly turned to mental exertion. Just so a 
reaction set in against Pope and wrought an 
entire overturn of the classical theory. The 
revolution, however, was longer delayed in the 
case of Pope and was more fundamental. Dur- 
ing his life Pope's sway was little contested. 
Indeed if we include his entire life, we may say 
that Pope ruled English literature for nearly a 
century. When at last the revolt came, under 
Wordsworth, that innovator was obliged to 
spend half his years and nearly all his powers 
before the worth of what he was doing was 
recognized. It would be no exaggeration to 



184 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

say that it took two political revolutions to 
bring about the new Romanticism: the Amer- 
ican Revolution in which the dignity of the 
individual was asserted, and the earth-shaking 
French Revolution where under the teaching 
of Rousseau the common instincts of our nature 
were championed as precious and safe. Words- 
worth's work it was to present imaginatively 
the results of these two revolutions. 

To understand the large scope of that work 
it will be well to bring before our minds some 
general traits of romantic poetry as contrasted 
with classical. Not that these traits appear 
alike in all; there are many varieties. We must 
not be misled by lazy labels — romantic, clas- 
sical. Characteristics of the one occur blended 
in varying degrees with those of the other. Yet 
it remains true that the Classicists as a school 
averted their gaze from half of human ken, and 
that men grew discontented with their narrow 
outlook, believing that in reality the half which 
they refused to see was the more important. I 
will then sum up in a few successive sections 
the chief characteristics of the romantic poetry 
as it diverges from the classical. 

(1) The obvious one, which immediately 
strikes the attention even of a careless reader, 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 185 

is the different fields from which their subjects 
are drawn. The Classicist deals with mankind, 
especially with the intellectual men and women 
of society. He enjoys the strife of tongues and 
lilvcs to observe the oddities and inconsisten- 
cies of his species. He is a social being and 
therefore finds his dwelling-place in the city. 
Exactly the opposite is the case with the 
Romanticist. His field is the country. He 
cares less for man, at least for man apart from 
nature. Only in the union of man and nature 
does he count either comprehensible. Accord- 
ingly nature pervades the whole of his poetry. 
No matter if he professes to deal with men and 
women in their most personal relations, he pro- 
jects them against a background of the coun- 
try. It will be objected that this is no inven- 
tion of the Romanticists. Nature was known 
long before the eighteenth century; and even 
during that century, while the rationality of 
man was exalted, there were nature poets too. 
There certainly were through all the eight- 
eenth century. But when examined closely 
they will be seen to resemble the Romanticists 
only slightly. These men, no doubt, prepared 
the coming change but did not in themselves 
show what it was to be. Certain poets wrote 



186 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

of nature prompted not so much by the scenery 
around them as by their recollections of Virgil. 
Virgil had loved the country and in his masterly 
"Georgics" described the scenes and labors of 
country life. His great name sanctified country 
poetry, particularly in England where Latin 
authors moulded the minds of the young in 
school and university. Shenstone and Thomson 
show much of this tendency, though both had 
also a genuine love of nature. Then too the 
English have always lived largely out of doors 
and outside cities, and their literature might 
therefore be expected to make frequent men- 
tion of the plain facts of the country — soil, 
crops, cattle, sports, storms, sunshine — even 
when the writers have little poetic vision. 
Dyer, Somerville, Falconer, are such reporters 
of natural fact, and to a considerable extent 
Cowper too. But there is poetry nearer to the 
romantic than this. No movement bursts 
forth on a sudden. There is always a prepara- 
tion, and in the conditions which precede we 
can usually detect its germs. So underneath 
the established poetry of man a poetry is grad- 
ually forming which looks rather in a Gothic 
than in a classical direction and feels man to 
be so mysteriously allied with nature that in 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 187 

nature the moods of man find themselves 
somehow reflected. We are all familiar with 
such anticipative poetry in the writings of 
Gray, Collins, Burns, Blake. All these men 
know no sharp partition between the worlds 
of nature and of spirit. Man Hves in the midst 
of that which is not alien to him. 

(2) It is this view of nature, scantily repre- 
sented in the eighteenth century while Pope 
ruled, which the Romanticists took up and 
carried to a completeness unknown before. For 
not only do the Romanticists feel themselves 
gladdened through contact with nature, but a 
certain personal presence seems ever to meet 
them there. The country is therefore holy 
ground. There God abides. Men have driven 
him from the cities. In woods and hills we hear 
a voice which answers to our own. The Classi- 
cist conceives of God as the Great Artificer, 
" the great first cause, least understood," who 
ages ago set the world running, gave it fixed 
laws and then withdrew from interference, let- 
ting it thereafter care for itself. And certainly 
if a skilful workman could construct a per- 
petual-motion machine, he might thenceforth 
wisely retire from business. The Romanticist 
knows nothing of such a retired God. To his 



188 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

mind God is immanent in nature, not sundered 
from it. To-day he is as genuinely working 
there as ever he was. So closely involved is he 
that we can speak of him as if he were nature 
itself, of nature as if it were he. 

(3) This reverential way of approaching na- 
ture is pretty fundamental in romantic poetry 
and gives to it another special mark, mystery, 
the sense of wonder. Wonder was hardlj 
known to the Classicists, for their world is a 
place of well-defined bounds. They touch only 
those sides of life which can be rationally veri- 
fied, and consequently inhabit a world as clear 
as day. But what they look on with annoyance 
and distrust is the delight and place of abode 
of the Romanticist. As he goes forth into na- 
ture he finds everywhere more than he can com- 
prehend. A half -understood friend seems to be 
calling and to find an answer in the depths of 
his own being. He does not refuse to listen to 
the appealing voice because it is indistinct, but 
joyously acknowledges that mystery encom- 
passes all that is clear. 

(4) Naturally enough where such a sense of 
wonder is at work enthusiastic utterance will 
follow. The Romanticist honors enthusiasm, 
which Pope and his companions scorn. To 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 189 

their eye it shows bad breeding and would be 
unpleasant at an evening party. The Romanti- 
cist, however, dimly perceiving a reality greater 
than his fragmentary understanding can grasp, 
is stirred to enthusiasm by the wonder it ex- 
cites. At the very time when the literary and 
intellectual classes of England never mentioned 
enthusiasm without contempt, other classes 
were shaping by its use some of the greatest 
forces of the age. It was in 1739 that John 
Wesley opened his chapel in London, from 
which went forth a band of religious enthusiasts 
who brought a new dignity into daily life and 
lowered that of those hitherto accounted lead- 
ers. Through them religion acquired a reality 
of significance for the personal life which the 
fashionable deism of the Established Church 
had lacked. The age was starved for mystery 
and enthusiasm. It knew it was starved and 
it rewarded, perhaps unduly, whoever could 
supply its need. Ossian's strange poetry (1762) 
resounded throughout Europe. And about the 
time of the coming of Wordsworth there ap- 
peared a fantastic literature of wonder in the 
novels of Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and 
Monk Lewis. When, too, we disparage that 
sober sense to which the Classicist had held 



190 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

and react in favor of feeling and a sense of 
mystery, we are in danger of such sentimen- 
talism as uttered itself in Sterne's "Senti- 
mental Journey" and Mackenzie's "Man of 
Feeling." 

(5) In whatever direction we turn, we see a 
momentous revolution preparing. Its outward 
manifestations I have just traced. Its central 
principle appears in the new place it gives to 
the feelings in contrast to the intellect. Clear 
consciousness, it urged, does not cover the 
whole of life, not even the major part of it. The 
half -conscious instincts of mankind have always 
been his surest directors. We see this on a 
broad scale in the great popular movements 
which have revolutionized the world. These 
have not been the working out of precise plans 
of action; they have been for the most part 
blind motions, little understood by those who 
led them. Yet how vastly significant! Just so 
in private life the common man who follows 
his fundamental instincts is a more significant 
subject for poetry than the merely intellectual 
man. Classicism, because it insisted on the 
supremacy of reason was interested only in 
superior persons. It was aristocratic. Roman- 
ticism is the embodiment of democracy. We 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 191 

shall hardly discover an intellectual figure in 
the poetry of Wordsworth. Perhaps we may 
instance "The Happy Warrior," or Protesilaus, 
the husband of Laodameia. But Wordsworth 
usually deals with plain men and women, such 
as Michael, Margaret, Matthew, or the Leech 
Gatherer, people who are swayed less by reason 
than by instincts and half-conscious impulses. 
It is the elemental side of human nature, almost 
ignored by the aristocratic Classicists, which 
now attracts reverence. In 1765 Bishop Percy 
published his "Reliques of English Poetry," 
collecting in its three volumes the folk-songs, 
ballads, and half-instinctive rhymes through 
which popular feeling had been expressing 
itself for several centuries. In general the writ- 
ers were unknown. Ballads, it is said, have no 
single author. They voice the spirit of a com- 
munity. And even if this spirit acquires occa- 
sionally a single mouthpiece, he is of conse- 
quence only in so far as he embodies the 
thoughts and aspirations of a multitude. Lit- 
erary men had hitherto looked down on such 
verse, as lacking in art, but Bishop Percy's 
volumes came at a fortunate moment and were 
warmly acclaimed. Men saw here another 
source of poetry than the Classicists had used. 



192 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

The book was the herald of the romantic move- 
ment. 

(6) Such a changed attitude of mind re- 
quires enlarged and liberated modes of ex- 
pression. The poetic medium which the Classi- 
cists had carefully constructed was inadequate 
for the new needs. Pope had shaped for him- 
self a perfect instrument in his couplet of ten- 
syllabled iambic lines, rhyming together and 
rarely running over into the next couplet. His 
diction, too, had had the light touch, was swift 
and easy, in short was the language of culti- 
vated life. His followers could not be expected 
to equal Pope's delicacy. His heroic couplet 
became mechanically rigid. His occasionally 
heightened language was turned into poetic 
diction. The narrow bounds within which 
eighteenth-century emotion was content to 
express itself seem strange to us. Perhaps in 
aiming at perfection one must accept narrow 
bounds. But the Romanticist aims at nothing 
so small as perfection. He seeks the infinite, 
which never can be perfected. Accordingly a 
poetic instrument less constrained in compass 
is needed by him. The couplet, when used, is 
allowed to run over; blank verse is coaxed into 
many a new cadence; the sonnet, which honors 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 193 

a special mood, is revived; and free lyrical forms 
spring up in almost as great variety as among 
the followers of Donne. 

On tlie whole, we may say of the Romanti- 
cists what Wordsworth said of himself, that 
they "live by admiration, hope, and love." 
The Classicists, on the contrary, live by reason, 
epigram, and strife. Yet we may easily do 
them injustice. We must by no means imagine 
their work to have been futile. They represent 
our social side and guard the standards our 
race has set up. It is through their prized quali- 
ties of reason, clearness, and precision that man 
is able to live with man. Their great office it is 
to deal with the organic functions of society; 
they merely leave out of account the individual 
human being, who certainly had become some- 
what self-absorbed among their immediate 
predecessors. He it is who is now restored to 
his rights under Wordsworth. Not that so 
great a change could be effected by any single 
man. I have shown how throughout the eight- 
eenth century, especially during its latter half, 
converging forces were moving toward what 
was afterwards known as Romanticism. But 
Wordsworth was the first to know fully their 
meaning. He completely embodied them, illus- 



194 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

trating them in his poems and expounding 
them in his Prefaces. He was a serious scholar, 
too, in English poetry, acquainted with its 
whole extent and devoting a long life to its 
practice. Above all, men felt behind his novel 
lines a weighty personality, which ultimately 
compelled their admiration, and a distaste for 
the thin and artificial verse which preceded 
his. He may well be taken then as the prophet 
of the new movement. The circumstances of 
his life were favorable to a fresh poetic vision. 

That life extended from 1770 to 1850 and 
falls into four periods: (1) the period of his 
training, up to 1798; (2) his mastery, 1798- 
1815; (3) his dechne, 1815-1842; (4) the failure 
of his powers, 1842-1850. Obviously these 
periods were not so sharply separated in his 
life as on my pages. But they are natural dates, 
true turning-points in his career. The first 
ends with the publication of the "Lyrical Bal- 
lads," the second with his two volumes of 
*' Collected Poems," the third with his appoint- 
ment as Poet Laureate. Only the first two have 
importance here. 

Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, a 
small town on the west side of the English Lake 
District, a section of country only twenty-five 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 195 

miles square, yet possessing a diversified beauty 
not easily matched elsewhere. While its hills 
never rise above three thousand feet, they are 
strikingly precipitous and majestic on account 
of their slate formation. In the green valleys 
at their feet lie lakes both small and large, 
sometimes long so as almost to give the im- 
pression of a stream; while those that Words- 
worth says he loves best are so completely 
round as to forbid the thought of the passage 
of water. This round effect is sometimes empha- 
sized by an island. While the lowlands are 
luxuriant with trees and flowers, the hillsides 
are bare and the mountain moors, with their 
occasional rocky tarns, have a solemn savagery. 
For some time each day mists float about the 
peaks, down whose sides rush the many ghylls, 
or small streams, whose happy voices echo 
throughout Wordsworth's pages. One who 
lives in these valleys is seldom without the 
sound of falling water. 

In this beautiful land Wordsworth was born 
and here lived for nine tenths of his life. He 
was born in the common ranks, neither in 
poverty nor in riches, but in that happy middle 
condition where the worth of man is most 
apparent. His father was the business agent 



196 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

of the Earl of Lonsdale. Wordsworth's mother 
died when he was eight years old, his father 
five years later. At the death of his mother he 
was sent to the village of Hawkshead on Esth- 
wait Lake, a spot even more impressive than 
Cockermouth, the mountains being higher and 
the lake of peculiar splendor. Here two centu- 
ries earlier had been founded what the English 
call a Grammar School and we an Academy, or 
place of preparation for the University. Though 
not large, seldom having so many as a hundred 
pupils, it had excellent teachers and was one 
of the best schools of Northern England. All 
was plain in school and village. Wordsworth, 
a boy of eight, lived in the cottage of a motherly 
woman of the working class. All his life there- 
after was shared with the common people of 
this district. But these common people were 
not insignificant. In the Lake Country the 
land is generally owned by him who works it, 
an exceptional thing in England. Most English 
land is owned by gentlemen, from whom the 
farmer hires. In the Lake Country, thi'ough 
some curious tradition, it has come about that 
the land is largely owned by the cultivators 
themselves, who proudly call themselves 
"Statesmen," that is, owners of estates. While, 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 197 

then, they are peasantry, living in humble 
thatched cottages rarely two stories high, they 
are also men of property and self-respect. With 
this independent class, who had formed no 
habits of cringing subservience, Wordsworth 
grew up. Nine years he spent at Hawkshead, 
and in the first Book of that wonderful poem, 
"The Prelude," he shows us the growth of his 
mind there. He describes how nature laid hold 
of and gradually shaped him, until he came to 
reverence the scenes around him as if they were 
personal beings. 

There was little ready money in the Words- 
worth family at this time. The father's prop- 
erty was tied up in a lawsuit. The Earl of Lons- 
dale owed the estate a considerable sum for 
loans and arrears of wages, but the payment 
was evaded through excuse and postponement 
until Wordsworth was thirty years old. His 
uncles, however, advanced the means for his 
education and he resided at St. John's College, 
Cambridge, from 1787 to 1791. He always dis- 
parages the English University training and 
says he obtained little from it. But such state- 
ments require qualification. He certainly ac- 
quired a good acquaintance with Latin and 
English literature, learned to use books, and to 



198 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

mingle freely with men. These are not incon- 
siderable gains. No doubt, coming as he did a 
solitary boy from the country, accustomed to 
brood over the meaning of nature and having 
deeper sympathies with it than with mankind, 
he remained a good deal detaphed. The spirit 
of the place was alien to him, but not the less 
beneficial. The vacations, too, of an English 
University, being as long as the term time, 
gave him opportunity to return to his loved 
mountains and there renew the experiences of 
his early years. In 1790, the year before he left 
the University, he spent the summer vacation 
on a pedestrian tour through France to Swit- 
zerland, having as his companion a fellow 
collegian, Robert Jones. The two young men 
had little money, but eager hearts and sturdy 
legs. They were good observers. Wordsworth 
had early fixed his mind on poetry. When 
he returned he brought with him the ma- 
terial for a long poem entitled *' Descriptive 
Sketches." 

This poem, however, cannot be called his 
first. Another had been begun earlier, of sim- 
ilar character and about equal length. During 
two of his University vacations he attempted 
to picture in verse the scenes which moved him. 



WILLL4M WORDSWORTH 199 

and the completed poem he printed in the same 
year as the "Descriptive Sketches " under the 
title of "An Evening Walk." The two in their 
early form are of extreme interest for the stu- 
dent of English poetry, for they stand at a 
parting of the ways. Youthful they are in 
many respects, lacking in structure, and often 
feeble in execution; they show their writer in 
transition from the ideals of Classicism to 
those of Romanticism. Their verse is the closed 
couplet; their language, the artificial poetic 
diction of the followers of Pope. But their 
substance is purely realistic. Nature, not man, 
is their theme. The poet's eye is continually 
on its object. Everything is specific, the gener- 
alizing epigram seldom used. Indeed so far do 
they go in accurate observation that poetry is 
often overlooked. The marks, abundant here 
of the type of poetry which Wordsworth was 
to spend his life in combating, are the more 
striking because so speedily outgrown. Five 
years later, when the "Lyrical Ballads" were 
published, no trace of the earlier manner re- 
mained. Unfortunately most readers are un- 
able to observe the change. Later editions of 
both poems are thoroughly revised. Two 
poems of quite ordinary merit have taken the 



200 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

place of two whose historic importance was 
exceptional. 

"An Evening Walk" was dedicated to his 
sister, Dorothy. Of all the circumstances in 
Wordsworth's life fitting him for his diflBcult 
task, the influence of that remarkable woman 
must be counted the most fortunate. A year 
and a half younger than her brother, she shared 
his thoughts and hopes from childhood. Out- 
ward intercourse was interrupted for a time by 
his life in Hawkshead, Cambridge, and France. 
Yet even then letters kept them united. When 
he settled in England his sister joined him and 
was not again parted from him for more than 
fifty years. Many who knew them both thought 
her the more original poetic genius. She had 
more ardor than her brother, was more swiftly 
observant, and no less sure in her choice of 
words. But she was content to merge her tal- 
ents in his. She criticized all he wrote, often 
suggested subjects, discussed plans of develop- 
ment, and frequently furnished admirable lines 
for his poems. I have her copy of "An Evening 
Walk." Many passages are rewritten in her 
hand, and in later editions Wordsworth adopted 
most of the changes there proposed. He was 
never tired of acknowledging his obligations 
to her. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 201 

"She gave me eyes, she gave me ears. 
And humble cares and delicate fears, 
A heart the fountain of sweet tears. 
And love and thought and joy." 

For one naturally so solitary as he, and ren- 
dered still more so by his aggressive task, her 
stimulating sympathy was of inestimable 
worth. 

Immediately on leaving the University, 
Wordsworth went abroad again. A vagrant 
element was ever deep in him. He was way- 
ward and did not like to live by plan. "This 
one day" he was ever ready to "give to idle- 
ness." For books he never greatly cared, 
but thought his mind fed best "in a wise pas- 
si veness." Frequent journey ings were really 
his books, journeyings mostly on foot. So for 
half a dozen years after graduation, poor 
though he was, he chose no definite career. His 
uncles pressed him to enter the Church. He 
neither did so nor refused, but with other 
dreams in mind turned back to France. And 
here once more his usual good fortune attended 
him, permitting him personal experience of 
that tremendous awakening of a people. He 
tells us in "The Prelude" how now for the 
first time he felt the worth of man. Unlike most 



202 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

of us, lie had known nature and lived in com- 
munion with her long before he discovered 
man. 

The year which Wordsworth now spent in 
France was a momentous one in the life of the 
French nation. Instructed by a young French 
lieutenant, Beaupuis, Wordsworth heartily, 
accepted the principles of the Revolution and 
seriously considered joining the Club of the 
Gironde. The influence of Rousseau was keenly 
felt and has left its permanent mark on his 
poetry. As he seemed to see a new race of man- 
kind arising around him, generous, free from 
institutional control, bent on giving equal 
opportunities to all, with warm mystic aspira- 
tions substituted for doctrinal beliefs, his heart 
burned to work a similar democratic revolution 
in poetry. For one brought up among the inde- 
pendent population of Cumberland there was 
nothing absurd in French ideals of equality. 
But easy too it became under these laxer ideals 
to let self-expression triumph over moral re- 
straint. Professor Harper has shown on in- 
dubitable evidence that during this year of 
mancipation a French girl bore him a daughter. 
Those who think of Wordsworth as cold and 
formal are misled, I think, by his lack of humor 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 203 

and his ability to live alone. At any rate the 
democratic fervor which burst into full con- 
sciousness during this year in France, repre- 
sents most of what distinguishes Wordsworth. 
As that democratic sentiment decayed in later 
years, most of his powers went with it. During 
his second period it was helpfully attended, but 
not suppressed, by other interests. 

Funds failing, Wordsworth was obliged to 
return to England. He came home enthusiastic 
for popular sovereignty and found his country 
preparing to declare war on it. The shock was 
severe. He tells us that for some time he could 
not hear of a victory of the French over his 
own people without a throb of exultation. 
Worst of all, the Revolution itself began to 
disappoint him. Wild excesses broke out. 
Chaotic liberty set free the brute in man. Yet 
the repressive measures of his own government 
disturbed him hardly less. In this season of 
perplexity he came under the influence of 
William Godwin, the doctrinaire socialist, who 
would reconstruct society according to a ra- 
tional plan. Popular instincts, which Words- 
worth had hitherto honored, were to be cast 
away and replaced by calculations of pleasure 
and pain. Teachings so at issue with Words- 



204 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

worth's natural beliefs induced in him a sort 
of pessimism which lasted, it is true, but a few 
years. It is traceable in such poems as "Guilt 
and Sorrow," the strange tragedy of "The 
Borderers," and in the denunciations so fre- 
quent afterwards of the analyzing intellect. To 
win peace and hope once more he set himself 
to a serious study of society and the sources 
from which happiness springs. Happiness had 
been somehow missed in France. Wordsworth 
came to believe that it cannot be attained 
through legislation or by changes in social 
forms. These lie outside m.an, while the 
grounds of happiness are within. Inventions 
do not necessarily bring happiness, though 
adding to the comfort and ease of ordinary 
life. Intellect does not insure it, nor wealth, 
nor any of the things the vulgar follow. It 
springs from a different soil, the soil of a pre- 
pared heart. When we train those fundamen- 
tal instincts which ally us with God, with 
nature, with our fellowmen, to be simple, 
strong, responsive, we shall be happy and the 
State prosperous. 

In the years 1795-1798 Wordsworth fash- 
ioned his gospel and dedicated himself to pro- 
claim it. By purification of the emotions he 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 205 

will bring men such joy and freedom as they 
have never known before. The poet's office is 
now seen to be divine. Into it Wordsworth 
pours all the enthusiasm of the revolutionary 
time but adds to it judgment, poise, and con- 
secration. Hardly in any other poet has so 
penetrating an expression been given to the 
familiar aspects of nature, the homeliness of 
domestic life, and the sense of an encompassing 
power always attending us with its love. A 
response to that love, expressed in joyous 
acceptance of nature and human life, is open 
to all. 

To the proclamation of these doctrines in 
poetry, their only fit medium, Wordsworth at 
once addressed himself. His sister gave him 
hearty sympathy and a friend provided the 
means. For a year or two after returning from 
France, Wordsworth had seen much of a young 
Cumberland man, Raisley Calvert, who, dying 
in 1795, left Wordsworth nine hundred pounds. 
To Calvert lovers of Wordsworth owe a monu- 
ment, for he it was who made this soul-renew- 
ing poetry possible. The little income from 
the Wordsworth estate which had hitherto 
enabled him to live without occupation was 
now exhausted. Had it not been for Calvert's 



206 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

opportune bounty the poet, just when he had 
discovered his sacred calhng, must have been 
forced into some bread- winning profession. 
Calvert saved him for us. The sum was small; 
but it made a poetic career possible for one 
who could live as peasants live. In 1795 he 
hired a house in Dorsetshire on the south coast 
of England, and there his sister joined him. 
By close economy, Calvert's gift met all their 
needs till the settlement of the Lonsdale claim, 
six years later. 

At their home in Dorsetshire the pair were 
visited in 1796 by Coleridge, and a lifelong 
and mutually advantageous friendship was 
begun. No one else except his sister ever 
brought Wordsworth such intellectual stimu- 
lus as this learned, original, ill-ordered, and 
lovable fellow poet; and to Coleridge Words- 
worth's sanity was a constant protection. In 
order to be near the new friend the Words- 
worths moved the following year to Alfoxden 
on Bristol Channel, where Coleridge was then 
living. Here the three planned the momentous 
volume destined to bring a new poetic hope to 
mankind. In remembrance of Bishop Percy's 
revelation of the precious poetry growing up 
unnoticed among the common people, it was 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 207 

to be called a book of Ballads; while in con- 
trast with the formal didactic verse of the 
eighteenth century it was to be Lyrical. Its 
aim was to exhibit our humdrum world as 
filled with sources of wonder, the supernatural 
penetrating it more richly and usually than 
unheeding men suppose. This aim was to be 
effected in two ways. Coleridge, by the witch- 
ery and simplicity of his language, was to give 
an air of probability to the marvellous; Words- 
worth was to show the presence of the mysteri- 
ous in occurrences of daily life. Both alike 
would break through the benumbing influence 
of custom, would restore the lost sense of won- 
der, and so give back to grown men and women 
the freshness of interest which the child feels 
in everything he sees. With large assistance 
from Dorothy Wordsworth the friends set to 
work, and by 1798 the volume was ready for 
publication. It may well be called the Magna 
Charta of modern poetry. In it the modern 
mind at last finds itself. Here every one may 
read the Wordsworthian gospel of "joy in 
widest commonalty spread." 

The tentative period of Wordsworth's life 
was now over. Henceforth he knew clearly 
what he wished to do, and for the next fifteen 



208 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

years felt himself possessed of power to do it. 
As soon as the epoch-making volume was out, 
Wordsworth sought retirement. Writing al- 
ways exhausted him, and he now needed time 
for mental brooding after so much production. 
He spent the winter at the small town of Goslar 
in Germany, producing there little beside the 
Lucy series of poems. Returning, he sought to 
establish himself with his sister in some eco- 
nomical spot where the country around should 
be beautiful and the people persons of worth. 
For his purposes nothing could be better than 
Dove Cottage at Grasmere, in the centre of 
the Lake Country. Here he lived for the nine 
years, 1799-1808, and here much of his best 
poetry was written. The cottage still stands, 
hardly superior to its neighbors, with its small 
rooms, stone floors, thatched roof, and small 
hillside garden in the rear; though now modern 
houses on the opposite side of the road cut off 
its former view of Grasmere Water. It has 
been bought by friends of Wordsworth and 
turned into an admirable memorial of him, his 
household furnishings replaced, and collec- 
tions of his books, pictures, and letters suitably 
displayed. 

In 1801 the lawsuit with the Earl of Lonsdale 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 209 

was settled and Wordsworth received £8500. 
When one remembers that money at that time 
was worth several times what it is to-day, it is 
evident that Wordsworth had now a compe- 
tence for life. Hitherto only by the strictest 
economy could he maintain himself and his 
sister. Now, just as his means were about ex- 
hausted, this large sum became his. The follow- 
ing year he married Mary Hutchinson, a friend 
of his sister's and a former schoolmate of his 
own at Hawkshead. A happy marriage it 
proved. She was an intellectual companion of 
her husband, quiet, patient and believing. 
Companionship with two admiring women, 
each endowed with more earnestness than 
humor, profoundly affected Wordsworth's life 
for good and for ill. The family's means were 
increased in 1813 by Wordsworth's appoint- 
ment as distributor of stamps for Westmor- 
land, and in this year he moved from Grasmere 
to the neighboring village and to the stately 
residence of Rydal Mount, where he remained 
till his death. Here in 1814 he published "The 
Excursion," and in 1815 issued the collected 
edition of his poems, with its elaborate Preface 
in defense of his poetic theories. 

With these publications Wordsworth's sec- 



210 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

ond period, his period of Mastery, comes to an 
end. Of most poets it may be said that half of 
their work is more than the whole. But of 
none is this more true than of Wordsworth and 
Browning. Both are burdened with a mass of 
indifferent verse which seriously obscures the 
excellence of the remainder. While Words- 
worth occasionally produced good poetry after 
1815, especially in sonnet form, one who would 
estimate his importance may wisely pass it by 
and accept only the earlier. Were half of all 
Wordsworth wrote destroyed, he would be 
generally acknowledged to be one of the three 
or four most original poets of our language. 

Several causes combined to lessen his poetic 
power at a time when life was only half spent. 
The first splendor of a poet's work is apt to 
grow dim with time, and Wordsworth matured 
early. Even in 1798 when writing "Tintern 
Abbey" he noticed that his youthful intoxica- 
tion with the sensuous beauty of nature was 
giving way to reflection : 

"I cannot paint 
What then I was. The sounding cataract 
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, 
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood. 
Their colors and their forms, were then to me 
An appetite; a feeling and a love 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 211 

That had no need of a remoter charm 
By thought supphed, nor any interest 
Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past." 

He continued to speak of this half-regretted 
change during the next dozen years. His inter- 
est was turning more and more from the emo- 
tion excited by concrete objects to abstract 
thought about them. Nor was this altogether 
loss. The vividness of his poetry suffered, but 
there came a breadth of view, a sobriety of 
judgment, an ability to meet men and writers 
of unlike kinds, and a certain statesmanship in 
dealing with public questions beyond the range 
of his restricted youth. In many respects 
Wordsworth was developing as a man while 
declining as a poet. 

But on the contrary, many admirers of 
Wordsworth think that a certain moral decline 
in the man attended that in the poet and was 
largely responsible for it. We have seen how 
ardent was the democratic fervor of his early 
years. The September Massacres occurred 
while he was in France. He excused them and 
kept his enthusiasm for the Revolution. As 
late as 1798 he was an object of suspicion to 
the English Government on account of his 
French sympathies and radical associates. In 



212 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

that year he, Coleridge, and Southey seriously 
planned leaving England for America and 
establishing a socialist colony there. The 
companions of his youth were mostly children 
of humble parentage and for many years his 
home was Dove Cottage. The ordinary lan- 
guage of common people he thought had more 
poetry in it than that of the learned and refined. 
In short his sympathies and poetry were given 
to the multitude. When the liberal statesman 
Fox died in 1806 Wordsworth wrote an an- 
guished lament: 

" Sad was I, even to pain deprest, — 
Importunate and heavy load." 

Yet during the latter half of his life he was a 
Tory of the most extreme sort. He held govern- 
ment oflSces, accepted a pension, issued elec- 
tion manifestoes in behalf of Tory candidates, 
and opposed all attempts at popular education. 
No wonder that with such a changed mind 
came a transformation of his poetry. While 
its technical excellence remained as high as 
ever, its life was gone. "Ecclesiastical Son- 
nets" took the place of "Peter Ball" and 
"Lucy Gray." 

Such is the indictment which Browning has 
poetized in his "Lost Leader." Most lovers of 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 213 

Wordsworth will regretfully confess that it has 
some justification. Yet even so, it is well to 
examine the honorable influences in Words- 
worth's character and in the condition of the 
time which might draw him in the aristocratic 
direction. Suggestions of corrupt influence are 
not even plausible. No favor, office, or pension 
could make a man so austere swerve from what 
he approved. His danger lay in an opposite 
direction. Throughout life he was too insistent 
on his own ways and too obstinate in holding 
to beliefs once fixed. Coleridge's opinions 
underwent as great a change as those of his 
friend, though he received no such govern- 
mental favor. Wordsworth's change from a 
group of democratic ideas to an aristocratic 
requires an explanation more subtle than 
Browning has offered. 

As regards the shifting of his sympathies in 
the great war, from the French side to the 
English, it may be said that the Revolution 
abandoned him rather than he the Revolution. 
During his stay in France he belonged to the 
party of the Girondists. This was overthrown 
by the Jacobins and most of its members were 
guillotined. The Jacobins in turn became dis- 
organized; and after a period approaching anar- 



214 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

chy power was seized by Napoleon. While the 
early Revolution followed the dream of a world 
to be set free, the later sought to impose the 
will of one man on all Europe. The incompet- 
ence of French radicalism to organize itself, 
without falling into the hands of a dictator, 
naturally bred distrust over radicalism in 
general. Wordsworth expressed his detestation 
of Napoleon in powerful fashion, and most 
men to-day will agree with him in thinking 
England the champion of true freedom during 
the Napoleonic wars. But those wars were 
fought by the Tory party, the party of order, 
which gained in approval among sensible men 
as chaotic liberalism became discredited. It 
is true that Wordsworth, always a passionate 
lover of order, endured with too little indigna- 
tion, like most of his countrymen, the harsh, 
repressive measures of the Government. Eng- 
land was in a not unreasonable panic. Many 
good men suffered in it. It damaged Words- 
worth permanently. 

To such damage Wordsworth was constitu- 
tionally predisposed, not merely by his love 
of order, but by his distrust of knowledge and 
human reason. He who holds our half conscious 
instincts to be our most precious possession 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 215 

will not be zealous for popular education, espe- 
cially in a country where it has never been 
tried. Wordsworth, it must be remembered, 
came to acquaintance with the world of nature 
long before he knew that of man. To institu- 
tions, therefore, those huge agencies of social 
life most nearly resembling powers of nature, 
he always attached more importance as guides 
than he granted to individual initiative. It is 
not strange then that in studying the welfare 
of the poor and humble, in whom he never lost 
interest, he doubted whether their happiness 
would be promoted by starting the questioning 
spirit. He had always set great value on the 
blind affections connected with the home, the 
land, the sheep, the hills; and with advancing 
years he came to distrust whatever brought 
personal ambition among the working classes 
into conflict with these. The Church itself. 
Professor Harper thinks, he valued more as an 
institution and a social force than as a stimulus 
to personal piety. Whether we approve these 
tendencies in Wordsworth or condemn them, 
it is only fair to notice that they imply no 
sudden change of sentiment, but are to a large 
degree developments of much that was present 
in his early beliefs. 



216 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

Unfortunate developments I call them, espe- 
cially as occurring at a time when with advanc- 
ing years his mind was stiffening, concrete 
imagination and delight in natural beauty 
growing less, inclination to abstract thought 
increasing, and an established position in soci- 
ety, property, and poetic fame removing some- 
thing of the stimulus to creative work. It is 
sad to notice how in Wordsworth's case his 
reputation as a poet advanced about in propor- 
tion as his powers declined. Through most of 
his second period, the period of Byron's domi- 
nance, he was laughed at or comprehended 
merely by local coteries. But in his third and 
declining period his reputation had so far ad- 
vanced that Oxford crowned him with her 
highest degree. When four years later the 
Laureateship became vacant, it was pressed 
upon him. He at first refused it, on the ground 
of failing powers; but being urged as the 
acknowledged head of English poetry and as 
the natural successor to his friend Southey, he 
accepted. Curiously enough in the previous 
year a young poet, Alfred Tennyson, published 
two volumes which absorbed the attention of 
England and made other poetry seem for a 
time insipid. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 217 

A few closing words are needed to meet a 
current misconception of Wordsworth. Be- 
cause the poor and ignorant appear so fre- 
quently in his pages, he is often supposed to be 
the poet of a single class. And this impression 
is strengthened by his insistence that the proper 
diction for poetry is a selection from the lan- 
guage of common life. As well, however, might 
Christ be understood as addressing his Gospel 
to the poor man alone. The aim in both cases 
is the same. The restrictions of circumstance 
are counted unimportant and man is addressed 
merely as man. But it is held that manhood 
is more apt to appear in its simplicity among 
the poor and lowly than among those entangled 
in the conventionalities of artificial society. 
Yet it is manhood, after all, not poverty that 
is valued. 

A striking evidence that Wordsworth was 
unwilling to confine himself to any class is seen 
in his avoidance of dialect. Dialect poetry he 
admired when used by Burns, whose book was 
published twelve years before the "Lyrical 
Ballads." With the beautiful dialect of the 
Lake Country he was familiar from childhood. 
But dialect is the mark of a special community 
and a special class; and while according well 



218 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

with the character of the Scotch ploughman, 
would have obscured the broader aims of 
Wordsworth. Unlike the Romanticists, he is 
interested in those traits which draw men 
together rather than in those which bring per- 
sonal distinction. His figures, therefore, like 
those of the Classicists, are typical, and char- 
acters of marked individuality do not appear. 
Too little attention, in my judgment, has been 
paid to the avoidance of dialect by one whose 
interest in the plain man is so manifest. 

With the development of romantic poetry 
under Tennyson and Browning the number of 
Wordsworth's readers grew steadily less, and 
he has never regained the favor of the multi- 
tude. But that is largely because his work, like 
that of Pope, was so fully accomplished that 
its results have been taken up into the uncon- 
scious mind of our race. In every community, 
too, single silent devotees may still be found 
who make of him their spiritual guide. Like 
his loved master, Milton, he is a poet for our 
maturity, to whom we turn when the heedless 
and disappointing exuberance of youth is 
passed. Then his calm tones of wise optimism 
renew for us the sources of joy. We catch in 
them echoes of Rousseau and of Marcus 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 219 

Aurelius. Or rather, going back farther still, 
in his summons to the simple life and to rever- 
ence for the lowly we hear much of the message 
of Jesus. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 

Matthew Arnold's "Selections from the Poems of 
Wordsworth" in the "Golden Treasury" series are so 
excellent that no better advice can be given to one who 
seeks acquaintance with this poet than to bid him open 
the little volume anywhere and begin to read. But there 
is no harm in mentioning a few of the poems which have 
given Wordsworth a permanent hold on English and 
American minds. (The "Lyrical Ballads" were reprinte<l 
in America in 1802.) 

Among the narrative poems: "Ruth," " Michael," and 
"The Leach Gatherer." 

Among the Lyrics: "The Solitary Reaper," "Early 
Spring," "The Lucy Series," "Expostulation and Re- 
ply," "The Cuckoo," "Nightingale," "DafiFodils," and 
"Small Colandine." 

Among the Sonnets: Those on "London," "Westmin- 
ster Bridge," "The Beach near Calais," "The Extinction 
of the Venetian Republic," "Toussaint I'Ouverture," 
"The Subjugation of Switzerland," "To R. B. Haydon," 
"To Raisley Calvert," " Where lies the Land," "Scorn 
not the Sonnet." 

Among the reflective }X)ems: " Tintern Abbey," " Peele 
Castle," "The Fountain," 'The Happy Warrior," 
"Laodameia," the "Ode to Duty," and that on the "Inti- 
mations of Immortality." 

To these add the first Book of "The Prelude," espe- 
cially the last half, and fragments from the Preface to the 
second volume of the "Lyrical Ballads." If a strong 
Wordsworth appetite is developed, venture — though 
late — on "Peter BeU." 



VII 

Alfred Tennyson 



VII 

ALFRED TENNYSON 

Two gigantic figures dominate the English 
poetry of the nineteenth century, Alfred Tenny- 
son and Robert Browning. Their Hves stretch 
nearly across the century, entering it at the 
close of its first decade and leaving it near the 
beginning of its last. Their poetic span, that is 
the time during which they wTote, is longer, I 
believe, than that of any other English poet. 
Strange, that the two of longest flight should 
happen to come together! But such is the 
fortunate fact. Tennyson's first volume was 
published in 1827 when he was eighteen years 
old; his last, in 1892, the last year of his life, 
gave him a poetic span of sixty-five years. 
Browning fell but a year or two behind. That 
is an extraordinary length of poetic acti\'ity. 
The homely, slighted shepherd's trade is ordi- 
narily brief. In few poets does it extend beyond 
twenty-five years. In some of the greatest it 
has not passed half a dozen. Milton might 
seem almost to equal Tennyson. But though 
his was a fairly long life his poetic work was 



226 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

broken in the middle. For thirty years he 
turned aside to political pamphleteering and 
produced in poetry only a few sonnets. Words- 
worth had a life of eighty years; but he began 
to write late and ended early. Tennyson and 
Browning, both poets of the highest rank, kept 
their creative power through a period of unex- 
ampled duration. Together they sum up the 
intellectual tendencies of their century as no 
other century has been poetically summarized. 
Each, too, followed poetry as a profession 
and attended to nothing else. Pope was the 
first of our poets to be so whole-hearted. Up 
to his time poetry was commonly regarded as 
an accomplishment for the man of culture, a 
graceful addition to the serious tasks of life. 
Pope speaks with scorn of "the mob of gentle- 
men who write with ease." To him, to Words- 
worth, Tennyson, and Browning, poetry was 
a grave matter. They dedicated themselves 
to it from childhood and took on no other 
employment. But by no one of them was this 
exclusive devotion carried so far as by Tenny- 
son. During most of his life he withdrew from 
general society, wrote no prose whatever, 
hardly letters, giving himself altogether to his 
art. We demand this devotion of the painter 



ALFRED TENNYSON 227 

or musician and generally recognize that in 
their fields excellence is attainable only by 
such strenuous discipline. Curiously enough in 
poetry, the most arduous of the arts, we are 
less exacting. 

Having only this single interest, the life of 
Tennyson is peculiarly orderly and develops 
in a natural series of sequent literary stages. 
Its first period extends from his birth in 1809 
to the publication of "Poems Chiefly Lyrical" 
in 1830; its second to "In Memoriam" and the 
Laureateship in 1850; the third to the comple- 
tion of the "Idylls of the King" about 1870; 
the fourth ends with his death in 1892, in which 
year he printed a volume of miscellaneous 
verse and another of plays. While each of these 
periods contains a wide variety of verse, the first 
is predominantly juvenile and imitative; the 
second, lyrical; the third, narrative; the fourth, 
dramatic. The subjects of the first period are 
romantic and unimportant, those of the second 
turn largely on problems of love and fate, those 
of the third on social questions, those of the 
fourth on history. We might characterize the 
four periods locally, according to Tennyson's 
place of residence; naming the first Somersby, 
the second London, the third Farringford, the 



228 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

fourth Aid worth. Or we might group them 
around his chief associates: first his family', 
second his university friends, third his wife, 
fourth people of note. And each of these four 
modes of division will have an inherent con- 
nection with all the others. 

In studying the opening careers of Tennyson 
and Browning, 1830-1833, it is well to notice 
how favorable was the time for a young poetic 
adventurer. From 1834 to 1844 the field was 
almost clear, the rem.arkable group who gave 
poetic glory to the first quarter of the century 
having passed away and those who were to be 
conspicuous during its second half not having 
yet arrived. Coleridge died in 1834. Keats, 
Shelley, Byron, Blake, Crabbe, Scott, Lamb, 
and Rogers had all gone before. Hunt, Moore, 
Southey, and Wordsworth lived on, but had 
almost ceased to write verse, while Arnold, 
Clough, Patmore, the Rossettis, Morris, and 
Swinburne published nothing till after 1844. 
The poets of the barren interval were respect- 
able writers like Taylor, Talfourd, Hood, and 
the later Landor, with such popular favorites 
as P. J. Bailey and Robert Montgomery, none 
of them men likely to withdraw attention from 
a young poet of promise. Between the close of 



ALFRED TENNYSON 229 

one great poetic epoch and the coming of an- 
other a fortunate opportunity was offered for 
training the ear of England to new rhythms. 
This opportunity Tennyson seized, reaching 
full success with his volumes of 1842 and 1850. 
His equipment for the task and his steps to- 
ward its attainment I briefly describe. 

Tennyson was born and grew to manhood 
far from cities, in the small village of Somersby, 
Lincolnshire. Its low-lying scenery he has 
often painted, particularly in "In Memoriam" 
and the "Ode to Memory" — its fat fields 
"trenched from sky to sky," its luxuriant 
trees, straight roads and, where the land 
approaches the sea, its rolling sand hills. A 
dozen miles away, at Mablethorpe on the coast, 
the Tennysons had a summer cottage, and here 
Alfred's passion for the sea began. At Som- 
ersby and the neighboring parish of Wood 
Enderby his father was the rector, a stern dis- 
appointed man; for his own father instead of 
leaving his large estates in customary fashion 
to him, the elder son, had alienated them to his 
younger brother and left him with small means. 
The injury always rankled. The sweetness of 
the large household — eight sons and four 
daughters — was centered in the mother, some 



230 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

features of whose character Tennyson has 
sketched in "Isabel." Great physical hardi- 
hood was in the family; the father, Alfred, and 
one or two of the brothers being over six feet 
tall, and all but two of the twelve children liv- 
ing till past seventy. Still more marked was 
their intellectual power. The father was a 
graduate and LL.D. of Cambridge, a learned 
man, who had gathered a large library and 
early cultivated in his children a taste for art 
and literature. The girls were accomplished 
musicians, and most of the boys wrote poetry, 
criticizing each other's work while still chil- 
dren. Two of them, Frederic and Charles, pub- 
lished several volumes of verse and might have 
won distinction as poets had they not been 
overtopped by their brother. All became ac- 
quainted, even in childhood, with what is best 
in English poetry. In that secluded rectory 
there was no lack of stimulating society. 

As regards Tennyson's early practice in 
verse, he told his son that when he was eight 
years old he wrote in praise of flowers under 
the influence of Thomson; that at eleven he 
imitated Pope's "Iliad," and a year later com- 
posed an epic of six thousand lines in the man- 
ner of Scott. His brothers were writing hardly 



ALFRED TENNYSON 231 

less. By the time Alfred was seventeen so 
considerable a stock was accumulated that 
Frederic, Charles, and he formed the project 
of a collected volume of their verse, persuaded 
a bookseller of the neighboring town of Louth 
to print it, and even to pay £21 for the privi- 
lege. It appeared in 1827. No names were 
attached and though all three writers were 
alike involved, it was curiously entitled "Poems 
by Two Brothers." 

Seldom, I think, has a poet started at a 
farther remove from the goal he ultimately 
reaches. Of the Tennyson whom we know no 
one, however keen a critic, will detect a trace 
in that little volume. Of course boys have few 
ideas and are naturally imitative. It is not 
strange then that here we meet Byron, Moore, 
Scott, more frequently than the later Laureate. 
Byron, in particular, was at this time the idol 
of every romantic youth. When he died in 
1824, Tennyson said the whole world seemed 
to be darkened for him. Yet it is strange that 
when Tennyson first appears he should not 
appear at all. We should expect that one of so 
distinctive a note would have sounded some 
prelude of it at once, especially since it is 
clearly heard only two years later in his prize 



232 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

poem "Timbuctoo," and in every line of the 
volume of 1830 is unmistakable. The marvel is 
that he discovered himself so quickly after 
beginning in ignorance so complete. These 
early efforts, however, were valuable as giving 
a knack of verse, soon to be turned into a 
means of seK-expression. 

In 1827, the year in which " Timbuctoo " 
was published, Frederic Tennyson matriculated 
at Trinity College, Cambridge. The following 
year he was joined by Charles, a year younger 
than himself, and by Alfred, a year younger 
than Charles. Alfred had been prepared for 
the university by four unsatisfactory years at 
Louth School and by seven subsequent years 
of tuition under his father at home. He who 
hitherto had had few companions beside his 
brothers was now brought into close contact 
with a group of brilliant young men nearly all 
of whom subsequently attained literary fame. 
Spedding, Milnes, Merivale, Trench, Alford, 
and Hallam became Tennyson's intimate 
friends. FitzGerald was also at Cambridge at 
this time, but Tennyson did not make his 
acquaintance till several years later. Most of 
these men were members of the Society of 
Apostles, organized a few years earlier by F. D. 



ALFEED TENNYSON 233 

Maurice, and made up of the forward-looking 
minds of the university — reformers in poli- 
tics, questioners in religion, impassioned for 
every species of literary and moral advance, 
and drawing much of their inspiration from 
foreign ideals, or from such importers of them 
as Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. 
Most of these young men wrote poetry and 
were eager in discussing its nature and office. 

Arthur Henry Hallam was the golden youth 
of the company, looked up to by the rest in 
somewhat the same way as Sir Philip Sidney 
had been nearly three centuries before. The 
admiration lavished on him by all who crossed 
his path is difficult for us to understand. He 
reached no high academic rank, caring little 
for the mathematics and physics on which 
Cambridge lays its chief stress. His tastes were 
poetic and philosophic. He had a larger ac- 
quaintance with the Italian, French, and early 
English literatures than was common at that 
time. His death at twenty-two, his slender 
health and easy circumstances prevented him 
from trying his powers in any single book. The 
considerable body of miscellaneous prose and 
verse, published by his father, the historian, 
after his death, is judicious and accomplished. 



234 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

altogether creditable for a youth of his years, 
but rarely distinguished. Yet acute judges, 
like Gladstone, Tennyson, and the critical cir- 
cle with which he associated at the university 
counted him superior to all the men they knew. 
The charm was probably in the living personal- 
ity, for he was singularly vital — beautiful in 
face, delightful in voice, exalted in character, 
impressively intellectual, swiftly sympathetic, 
possessed of all the graces that attend wealth 
and high station, together with entire simplic- 
ity and sweetness. These qualities made him 
profoundly loved, perhaps a little over esti- 
mated. Tennyson has minutely described his 
friend in "In Memoriam" (85 and 107-109), 
has described too the happy holidays spent 
together at Somersby, where Arthur became 
engaged to Tennyson's sister Emily ("In 
Memoriam," 86). In 1829 Tennyson and he 
contested for the Cambridge Prize Poem, won 
by Tennyson, and in the summer of 1830 went 
together on an audacious errand to Spain, 
carrying supplies to revolutionists there. 

In 1830, too, Tennyson published his " Poems 
Chiefly Lyrical." A few shrewd reviewers were 
able to discern promise in the boyish volume, 
but it attracted little attention. Tennyson had 



ALFRED TENNYSON 235 

not yet acquired mastery of the type of poetry 
he would introduce. Early the following year, 
without taking a degree, he left Cambridge on 
account of the illness of his father, who died a 
few months later. At Somersby he remained, 
assuming the difficult financial charge of the 
family. And now for the next eleven years 
there fell upon him such a variety of afflictions 
and discouragements as would have crushed 
the spirit of any young poet less resolute than 
himself. 

In the last months of 1832 a second volume 
of miscellaneous poems was published, whose 
greater maturity gave both Hallam and him- 
self high hopes. Many excellent critics — Cole- 
ridge, J. S. Mill, Miss Barrett, FitzGerald, 
E. A. Poe — saw in it the work of a poet of 
importance; but the searching, almost fero- 
cious, article in the "Quarterly," at that time 
a review of great influence, obscured for Ten- 
nyson all other approval. He was always 
morbidly sentitive to adverse criticism and 
unhappily the writer in the "Quarterly," prob- 
ably Lockhart, had fastened on genuine blem- 
ishes. While Tennyson was smarting under 
the attack, Arthur Hallam died suddenly at 
Vienna, on September 15, 1832. The double 



236 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

blow almost unmanned him, but he soon turned 
it to power. "Ulysses," he told his son, "was 
written soon after Arthur Hallam's death and 
gave my feeling about the need of going for- 
ward and braving the struggle of life." Now 
too the two deaths of those who were dearest 
to him, occurring as they did within two years 
of one another, brought before him that prob- 
lem of immortality which was to engage his 
attention throughout his remaining life. Its 
twofold aspect he treated in a sort of staccato 
measure in "The Two Voices," and then began 
laying stone on stone in the monument for his 
friend which was not completed for seventeen 
years. The attack of the "Quarterly" he even 
turned to good account, making it his school- 
master, searching out the truth of its cruel 
criticisms, elaborately revising the poems which 
had provoked it, and publishing nothing for 
ten years. 

In 1837 the Tennysons were turned out of 
the Somersby Rectory. The parting seemed 
to Alfred like a new separation from Arthur 
("In Memoriam," 98-101). For many years 
thereafter Tennyson had no settled home, the 
family occupying several houses under his 
charge in the vicinity of London, and he finding 



ALFRED TENNYSON 237 

his chief companionship with the friends of his 
Cambridge days. For general society he had 
always an aversion. 

The year before the family left Somersby 
Charles Tennyson married Louisa Sellwood 
there. Her sister Emily was the bridesmaid, 
Alfred Tennyson the groomsman. Half a dozen 
years earlier they had met. The acquaintance 
now soon ripened into an engagement, which 
brought a brief brightness into these dark 
years. But in 1840, since marriage seemed im- 
possible through lack of means, the engage- 
ment was broken and all correspondence be- 
tween the pair forbidden (cf. "Love and Duty" 
and "Aylmer's Field"). What an extreme case 
is this of persistence in an artistic aim! For 
nine years after leaving the university Tenny- 
son had undertaken no money -making employ- 
ment. He would not enter upon any such now 
nor put aside his poetic purpose even to secure 
a desired marriage. His very disappointment 
over his early books had fixed an iron resolve 
to make his next unquestionable. This was to 
be a collection of his entire work, but with 
additions, omissions, and such extensive re- 
vision as almost to amount to rewriting. The 
poems were to be brought as near to pure gold 



238 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

as ten years of critical elaboration could effect. 
And very near to pure gold they seemed when 
at last, in 1842, the two volumes were pub- 
lished. From that time nobody doubted that 
a great poet of a new type had arisen. 

But while these two ripened volumes made 
his fame secure, they were attended by a 
financial catastrophe. In 1841 a certain Dr. 
Allen, a man of enthusiastic tongue and slender 
judgment, became acquainted with Tennyson 
and persuaded him to put all his own small 
property and much of his mother's into a pro- 
cess of mechanical wood-carving, invented by 
himself. Three years later the scheme was 
found to be utterly worthless and Tennyson 
lost all. *'I have drunk," he writes, "one of 
those most bitter draughts out of the cup of life 
which go near to make men hate the world they 
move in" (cf. first section of "Maud" and 
*'Sea Dreams"). In 1845 Mihies applied to 
Sir Robert Peel for aid, and relates that when 
Peel had read "Ulysses" he granted a pension 
of £200. 

Henceforth the life of Tennyson is a series 
of successes. "The Princess" was published in 
1847 and in what may be called Tennyson's 
climactic year, 1850, fell together the three 



ALFRED TENNYSON 239 

most important events of his life: "In Memo- 
riam" was published, the Laureateship was 
conferred on him, and he was married to Emily 
Sell wood. "The peace of God came into my 
life when I wedded her," he afterwards said. 
She was his intellectual companion, his surest 
critic, his cheerful protector against the inner 
despondency and social annoyance from which 
he often suffered. They were married in the 
month in which "In Memoriam" appeared and 
visited Arthur Hallam's grave at Clevedon on 
their wedding journey, 

I have examined these two periods of Tenny- 
son's life with some minuteness because they 
were formative; in them all that distinguishes 
Tennyson comes to complete expression. The 
two periods which follow merely increase the 
bulk of his poetry according to patterns already 
set or, in departing from these, show him work- 
ing with diminished power. The third and 
fourth periods, therefore, require from us no 
detailed examination. The third (1850-1870), 
probably the happiest of Tennyson's life, was 
spent in seclusion with his wife at Farringford, 
on the coast of the Isle of Wight. Here he 
turned more and more to social studies in nar- 
rative form, studies already begun in "The 



240 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

Princess," continued in a survey of leadership 
as seen in "The Duke of Wellington," of the 
family tie in "Enoch Arden" and "Aylmer's 
Field," and of the ideal State in the "Idylls of 
the King." An epic on the legend of Arthur 
had been planned with Arthur Hallam and a 
section of it, the "Morte d'Arthur," had been 
written as early as 1835. However beautiful 
the completed "Idylls" are in parts, careful 
readers will feel them over-ornamented and 
over-moralized, dangers to which Tennyson 
was always liable. But they increased his pop- 
ularity, as the work of his last period did not. 
That consisted largely of plays. It was nat- 
ural, praiseworthy even, that one so devoted 
to institutions and so profoundly an English- 
man should follow his survey of society with 
dramas which, like the historical plays of 
Shakspere, exhibit crises in the development 
of his country. Such are "Harold," "Becket," 
"Queen Mary." Most poets at one time or 
another have a longing to be dramatists as well, 
and easily overlook differences in the require- 
ments of the two arts. Tennyson showed 
splendid persistence in a mistaken course. A 
third of all his poetry consists of plays and to 
it he gave a quarter of his life. His early 



ALFRED TENNYSON 241 

experience had taught him to press through 
partial failure to ultimate success. But dra- 
matic success he never attained. Any one of 
his plays, yes all of them, we would gladly 
exchange for another "Revenge," "Northern 
Farmer," "Lucretius," or "Lines to Virgil." 
A pessimistic attitude, too, toward modem 
conditions of society mars Tennyson's later 
work and is perhaps not unconnected with 
changes in his mode of life. As his fame in- 
creased, he became discontented with Far- 
ringford. It was too much exposed to the 
sight-seeing multitude and too remote from the 
celebrities who now sought him. The distrac- 
tions of renown were as injurious to him as to 
Wordsworth. In 1880 he built himself the 
castle of Aldworth in Sussex and out of it came 
as little important poetry as had come from 
Rydal Mount. In 1883, with some misgivings, 
he accepted a peerage. 

While Tennyson treats a wider range of sub- 
jects than any previous poet, to certain ones he 
gives a special prominence and has set on them 
his own distinctive mark. A few of his domi- 
nant ideas I name. 

He is preeminently a poet of England. No 
one else has so movingly sung its ideals, its 



242 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH HISTORY 

history, its scenery, its political grandeur, its 
hallowed domestic life. He never mentions 
Germany, France he distrusts. He is less inter- 
ested in Italy and America than in India. For 
good or for ill his sympathies are pretty strictly 
confined to his own country, where he passes 
his years contentedly with only brief excur- 
sions into a world beyond. Into England's 
soil his roots run deep through many genera- 
tions. He is a product of its land system, its 
church, its universities. Institutions, the per- 
manent and slowly elaborated organizations 
of society, nowhere more influential than in 
England, are what he honors. While for most 
of his life a hberal in politics, he dreads extremes 
and looks to the superior classes to guard the 
welfare of the inferior. It is the orderliness of 
his country which moves his admiration. Eng- 
land is 

"A land of settled government, 
A land of just and old renown, 
Where freedom broadens slowly down 
From precedent to precedent." 

Tennyson, too, is the poet of married life. 
He does not conceive of love as a fine rapture of 
vouthful hours, but as the source of the deep- 
est and most constant happiness in life. It is. 



ALFRED TENNYSON 243 

if we may so say, the institutional aspects 
of love which he emphasizes — marriage, the 
home, the care of children. Notwithstanding 
occasional bursts of lyric feeling, as in "Move 
Eastward, Happy Earth," he does not as a 
rule sing of the intense moments of passion, 
like Burns, but with Wordsworth approves 
"the depth and not the tumult of the soul." 

In his treatment of the great problems which 
agitated the nineteenth century Tennyson was 
almost a prophet. Before the idea of evolution 
had appeared as a scientific doctrine it was put 
forth by Tennyson hypothetically in "In 
Memoriam." The intellectual advancement of 
woman too (the evolution of half the human 
race) was announced by him before the ques- 
tion had even been seriously agitated. The 
fantastic dream of "The Princess" has become 
for us an every-day reality. 

A problem of the age more central still was 
the question of the adjustment of the physical 
world to the personality of man. In the nat- 
ural world we know there is "no variableness 
nor shadow of turning." Do similar mechanic 
forces direct our thinking and acting, or is there 
a spiritual principle within us not subject to 
the rigidity of law? How could a free being 



244 FORIVIATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

exist in a locked-up world? How is it that we 
control the fixed sequences of nature? Tenny- 
son met these grave questions equipped with a 
wider knowledge of science than any previous 
or contemporary English poet, and on the 
whole held to the spiritual side in the great 
argument, convinced that man does overrule 
the sequences of nature, that from him new 
sequences even begin. In taking this unfash- 
ionable position he again anticipated a change 
in public opinion. Up to 1875 the mechanistic 
conception was in the ascendant. Since that 
date a considerable reaction has set in. Scien- 
tific men have more and more perceived that 
some provision must exist in the universe for 
coordinating forces unlike mechanic agencies. 
Both tendencies of thought Tennyson recog- 
nized as important, felt both stirring strongly 
within himself, and yet to the last remained, 
like Browning, a profoundly religious man. 

One religious doctrine I have already men- 
tioned as agitating Tennyson from the very 
beginning of his career, the doctrine of immor- 
tality. Throughout life he regarded it as more 
fundamental than any other and came to feel 
a sense of passionate loyalty in maintaining it. 
Doubt about it he figured as a kind of deser- 



ALFRED TENNYSON 245 

tion. It led him to a sober interest in psychic 
phenomena of all sorts, especially since from 
childhood he had been subject to a peculiar 
trance state or auto-hj^pnotism. To this he 
refers in every period of his writing. A first 
sketch of it is given in "The Mystic," printed 
among the "Poems Chiefly Lyrical": — 

"He often lying broad awake, and yet 
Remaining from the body and apart 
In intellect and power and will, hath heard 
Time flowing in the middle of the night. 
And all things creeping to a day of doom." 

In his middle period it formed an essential ele- 
ment of "The Princess," appearing there half 
a dozen times and receiving the name of "the 
weird seizure." Near the close of his life it is 
presented with peculiar solemnity in the final 
sections of "The Ancient Sage." It would 
seem that in Tennyson's mind the state of con- 
sciousness thus described formed a kind of 
connecting link between this life and the next. 
Although man is the chief theme of Tenny- 
son's poetry, no poet has scrutinized nature 
more closely. Wordsworth surveys a scene as 
a whole and with reference to its effect on our 
feelings. He does not, like the naturalist, in- 
spect its details. Tennyson, on the contrary. 



246 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

observes physical facts with a minuteness prob- 
ably unmatched by any English poet except 
Shakspere. Generally, however, the natural 
scene so studied is used as merely a background 
for human activity. "The Dying Swan," "The 
Black Bird," "The Lines on Early Spring" are 
poems of pure nature. What others are there? 
Tennyson accepts the romantic principle of a 
correspondence between nature and mind and 
hence his outward scene is usually colored by 
the inner mood. The pathetic fallacy he carries 
to great extremes. 

Such, then, are the splendid themes with 
which Tennyson's poetry is charged. I put 
them all aside as having little to do with the 
design of this book. They are by no means 
peculiar to Tennyson nor is he likely to gain 
permanent life through their presentation. The 
dominant ideas of any poet are of transient 
interest. What is novel to one generation be- 
comes commonplace to the next. If a poet is 
to secure permanence, it must be by a contri- 
bution of larger value than these Tennysonian 
ideas. I, at least, have undertaken to present 
only those features of my half-dozen poets in 
which they become typical, that is, mark an 
epoch and enlarge the bounds of English poetry 



ALFRED TENNYSON 247 

by introducing something which it had not 
known before. What contributions then has 
Tennyson made of this distinctive kind? 

Arthur Hallam shall answer. When the 
crude and mannered little volume of "Poems 
Chiefly Lyrical" appeared in 1830, Hallam 
was one of the few to discern in it signs of 
future power. In a review contributed to the 
*' Englishman's Magazine" he calls attention 
to five distinct characteristics of Tennyson's, 
verse. These I briefly summarize as (1) its 
elevation of tone, (2) its luxuriance of imagina- 
tion, (3) its variety of measures and subtle 
adaptation of sound to sense, (4) its concen- 
tration on single moods, (5) the magic of its 
resulting pictures. Here in a few sentences 
Hallam indicates with astonishing accuracy 
the advance which Tennyson was to bring 
about in English poetry. Especially noticeable 
are the third and fourth points, Tennyson's 
reconstitution of the technique of our verse 
and his handling of character. To a considera- 
tion of these I devote the remainder of this 
chapter. 

We all know two contrasted types of poets : 
the one which under the impulse of feeling 
pours that feeling forth in unpremeditated 



218 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

song, and the other which studies the emo- 
tional material and shapes it into an object of 
enduring beauty. Tennyson is of the latter 
sort. He is ever a conscious artist, belonging to 
the family of Virgil, Petrarch, Milton, Keats, 
rather than to that of Homer, Ariosto, Burns, 
Shelley. He is an elaborate student of poetry 
and no improvisatore, though he misleadingly 
declares 

*' I do but sing because I must. 
And pipe but as the linnet sings." 

From him we do not get the swift and happy 
spontaneities which we enjoy in Burns. In his 
first volumes there was perhaps something of 
the "wild careless rapture." But we have seen 
how, because this met with reproof, Tennyson 
entered on ten years of self -scrutiny which gave 
him the fixed critical habits by which his 
meaningful poetry was henceforth fashioned. 
*'I was nearer thirty than twenty before I was 
anything of an artist," he told his son. His 
later successes are the results of deliberate pur- 
pose, careful workmanship, severe and repeated 
revision; but all carried to so high a pitch that 
the harmonious outcome affects us as a species 
of magic. 

It will be well to examine this poetic artistry 



ALFRED TENNYSON 249 

with some care because it is that which in the 
long run is Hkely to give Tennyson survival 
value. How fully he has reflected on his art 
and how seriously he takes it may be seen in 
his many poems on the poet's oflSce. I count 
fifteen such. He has half a dozen experiments 
in Greek metres and several in Saxon. Having, 
too, a passion for perfection and knowing it 
can seldom be reached by first thoughts, he 
frankly alters his lines in the face of the public, 
rarely without improvement. "The Palace of 
Art," for example, first appeared in 1833. In 
1842 twenty-seven of its seventy-six stanzas 
were struck out and sixteen new ones added. 
In 1850 and 1851 there were further additions 
and omissions; while of minor changes in word 
or line carried on through this period I count 
nearly fifty. Similar emendations occur in 
nearly all his work. Only Wordsworth among 
previous English poets ever revised in this 
fashion, and Wordsworth's changes were not 
always for the better. The study of Tennyson's 
varying text is a lesson in poetic artistry. 

Hallam rightly praises the variety and fit- 
ness of Tennyson's measures. Perhaps the most 
notable instance is the measure of "In Memo- 
riam," a marvel of adaptation. How lingeringly 



250 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ExVGLISH POETRY 

brooding is its mournful music, yet how readily 
stanza links with stanza! No abrupt break 
occurs, no forceful culmination; but the close 
rhymes of the middle lines, in connection with 
the distant ones of the first and last, both 
emphasize and distribute the grief with a pecu- 
har poignancy. The stanza is generally thought 
to be Tennyson's own and to have been formed 
for this specific purpose. Yet he experimented 
with it in three poems, first published in 1842 
and written about 1833, at the time when he 
was considering "In Memoriam" — "The 
Blackbu-d," "Of Old sat Freedom," and "Love 
thou thy land" — the first strangely out of 
accord with the massive feeling later judged 
appropriate. In "The Princess," accompany- 
ing the stanza with a refrain, he used it for the 
passionate song "Ask me no more." Though 
Tennyson, too, supposed himself to have in- 
vented the stanza, four or five cases of it have 
been pointed out in our earlier poetry, the most 
remarkable being one by Lord Edward Her- 
bert, the brother of George Herbert. This, 
curiously enough, deals with the same prob- 
lem and emotion as "In Memoriam," and is 
entitled "An Ode on a Question Moved Whe- 
ther Love Shall Continue Forever." 



ALFRED TENNYSON 251 

But the " In Memoriam " stanza is only 
one among many metric felicities of Tennyson. 
How superbly fitting to the large and vague 
aspirations of "Locksley Hall" is the fifteen- 
syllabled trochaic sweep of its couplet! That 
excessive sweetness which has given popular 
currency to "The May Queen" is as truly in 
the management of its fourteen-syllabled line 
as in its sickly sentiment. On the other hand, 
think of the sturdiness of "The Oak," the 
sternly insistent "Charge of the Light Bri- 
gade," the swift simplicity of "Sir Galahad," 
the meditative refinement of the "Lines to 
Virgil," the massive iterations of "Merlin and 
the Gleam." When Hallam speaks of "the 
exquisite modulation of Tennyson's words and 
cadences to the swell and fall of the feelings 
expressed," we recall the diversified sections 
of "Maud," the changing cadences of "The 
Lotos-Eaters" and "The Revenge." 

Perhaps the subtlety of Tennyson's "finger- 
ing" of his line may best be seen by a compari- 
son of seemingly similar poems. On reading 
"The Daisy" and the "Lines to F. D. Mau- 
rice," any one will be likely to call the novel 
and beautiful measures the same, though the 
two poems produce a distinct difference in the 



252 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

feeling experienced. On examination the latter 
will be found to have two dactyls in the last 
line of each stanza; "The Daisy" but one. 
Comparison on a broader scale may be had in 
the measures of "The Palace of Art," "The 
Dream of Fair Women," the "Lines to Mary 
Boyle," and "The Poet," where small diver- 
gencies from a common form give widely un- 
like effects. 

Where one constant measure is employed, as 
strikingly in blank verse, great variety is still 
secured. Sound and sense are suitably adjusted 
by making the movement slow or swift through 
clogged or smooth syllables, by allowing lines 
to run over or stopping them at the end, and by 
variations in the central pause. No device is 
too small to escape Tennyson's notice, yet none 
obtrudes. Each is welded into support of all 
the rest. By studying small adjustments 
Tennyson developed a blank verse more flexi- 
ble and sensitive than any poet except Milton 
had known before. A single passage from 
"CEnone" will show what delicious music a 
master can draw from a common instrument. 

"There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier 
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. 
The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen, 



ALFRED TENNYSON 253 

And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand 

The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down 

Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars 

The long brook, falling through the cloven ravine 

In cataract after cataract to the sea. 

Behind the valley topmost Gargarus 

Stands up and takes the morning; but in front 

The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal 

Troas antl Ilion's columned citadel. 

The crown of Troas." 

Let one recall for contrast the barbaric chant 
of allegiance in "The Coming of Arthur" and 
it will be seen how Tennyson can "sing to one 
clear harp in divers tones." 

I have no need to examine in detail his minor 
poetic subtleties — his frequent and impressive 
repetitions of word or phrase, his keying a 
passage to a certain emotional tone by the use 
of appropriate vowel sounds, his strengthening 
important words by alliterated consonants, his 
substitution of a trochee for an iambus in his 
first foot, or of three short syllables for a short 
and a long wherever a livelier movement would 
be welcome. These niceties have been sufii- 
ciently remarked by the critics. Occasion- 
ally, perhaps, he is too obvious in alliteration. 
The famous couplet closing "The Princess," 
"small sweet Idyl," 

" The moan of doves in immemorial elms. 
And murmuring of innumerable bees," 



254 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

shows by its fame its independence of the con- 
text and consequently its weakness. In gen- 
eral, however, Tennyson is a good teacher of 
the technique of verse. Since all that he does is 
intentional, he can be tracked more easily than 
an intuitive poet; and usually he finds his way 
through trial and error to a sound and beautiful 
result. 

But while this technical excellence is, in my 
judgment, what is most likely to insure length 
of days to Tennyson, he is not, like Poe, Swin- 
burne, and Bridges, merely a technician. What 
he says is important as well as his mode of say- 
ing it. He marks an advance of the naturalistic 
movement toward the depicting of individual 
character. We have seen how the Romanticist 
turned away from the generalities of Classi- 
cism, prizing the specific fact, the specific expe- 
rience, the specific person. But this new valu- 
ation of the world, though it lay deep in Words- 
worth, was incompletely carried out by him. 
The presentation of individual character is the 
hardest of poetic tasks. It cannot be said that 
Wordsworth ever accomplished it. He is so 
much occupied with setting forth those primal 
instincts which he believes to be the support 
of every good man that he pays little heed 



ALFRED TENNYSON ^55 

to the shifting moods of the single human be- 
ing. In Tennyson that minute observation of 
the individual at which Romanticism aimed 
first reaches expression. An actual person, as 
he walks the street, is a unique compound of 
both good and evil, built up out of racial in- 
stincts, , parental inheritance, social environ- 
ment, accidental circumstance, with a dash of 
idiosyncracy, and the whole more or less 
vaguely directed toward certain ideal ends. No 
individual is quite consistent or altogether 
classifiable. Yet in spite of his wayward vari- 
ety. Romanticists rightly count him the one 
being of value in the universe. 

Now in Wordsworth the moral interest is so 
strong that scanty justice is done to the com- 
plexity of human nature. Wordsworth never 
fully broke with Classicism, and most of his 
characters remain types. Michael himself is 
the typical dalesman, with few accidental or 
distinctive traits. Perhaps those who come 
nearest in Wordsworth's poetry to living and 
breathing persons are Peter Bell, Ruth, and 
Margaret of "The Excursion." But even they 
are shadowy. 

The most important work of Word worth's 
two great continuers, Tennyson and Browning, 



256 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

was to be done in this field of realistic psychol- 
ogy. Their methods were unlike. Hallam notes 
in Tennyson "his power of embodying him- 
self in ideal characters, or rather moods of 
character, with such accuracy of adjustment 
that the circumstances of the narrative seem 
to have a natural correspondence with the 
predominant feeling and, as it were, to be 
evolved from it by assimilation." Tennyson's 
method of composition could hardly be more 
justly stated. It is his distinction to have intro- 
duced into English poetry a new kind of por- 
trait-painting, the portraiture not of any man 
as a whole but of some single mood, into which 
for the moment all the man's character and all 
his surroundings are absorbed. These single 
moods, abstract and ideal though they are and 
not confined to any one individual, are then 
supplied with an extremely realistic setting 
from which everything which does not heighten 
the effect is carefully excluded. The method is 
so characteristic and important as to require 
detailed illustration. It was early employed. 
In his first volume, of 1830, it was put forth in 
a form so extreme as to bewilder and repel the 
public. Tennyson soon made it less obtrusive, 
but applied it steadily henceforth in softened 



ALFRED TENNYSON 257 

form in all his best work. His poems are a 
museum of separate moods. Whenever he at- 
tempted a rounded and integral character, he 
failed — as in King Arthur, Enoch Arden, or 
Harold. Perhaps those who come nearest to 
recognizable human beings are Guinevere, the 
Northern Farmer, and the hero of "Maud." 
Yet even these represent rather typical mental 
attitudes than concrete persons. 

In 1830 Tennyson printed "Mariana." The 
theme was to be desolation; and how could 
that incommunicable mood be better painted 
than in the figure of a deserted girl in a lone 
farmstead of the fens.^* A single poplar marks 
the spot. The water in the trench which drains 
the surrounding marsh is black and slimy. The 
flower pots are thick with mould. The thatch 
of the house is worn. The nails are rusted, and 
the fruit tree is falling from the wall to which 
it had been trained. Everything is in decay. 
The shrill wind is heard without, and in the 
early morning bears along an occasional crow 
of cock, low of cattle, or whir of bat. Within 
the house the only sounds are the ticking 
clock, the wainscot mouse, the fly on the win- 
dow-pane; the only voice the sob of the for- 
saken girl. Of her circumstances we know 



258 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

nothing; of herself nothing except her utter 
loneliness, and this reported not so much by 
her words as by the morbid objects in which 
we see her isolation. No doubt the picture is 
over-charged, as are the companion pictures 
of Lilian, Madeline, and the rest. But these 
slender girls will not appear so silly when 
we regard them not as full-length portraits 
of character, but as early experiments in a 
method of evolving from a predominant mood, 
as Hallam says, the circumstances which cor- 
respond with it. About the worth of these 
moods Tennyson is not primarily concerned. 
Enough for him that they exhibit a genuine 
phase of humanity. 

Illustrations of the same method on a larger 
scale, and worked out with more subtlety and 
increased dramatic power, are to be found in 
"The Lotos-Eaters" and "Ulysses." The 
desire for rest belongs to each of us. What 
situation will display it most fully? What 
better than the luxuriant island where, after 
ten years' struggle with tempestuous seas, 
the companions of Ulysses land, taste the sopo- 
rific fruit, and doubt the worth of further en- 
deavor .f* By every artifice of scene and sound 
Tennyson compels us into sympathy with 



ALFRED TENNYSON 259 

repose. But for strenuosity he does as much 
in Ulysses. After losing Arthur Hallam, as I 
have already said, he was tempted for a time 
to sink into inaction; then remembering the 
quenchless energy which Dante attributes to 
Ulysses, he roused himself to throw off the 
listlessness of the home-circle and once more 
to "seek a newer world" of art. He may be 
said to have "touched the Happy Isles" in 
his volumes of 1842. But what full justice is 
done to the contrasted moods ! The limitations 
of each which would be necessary in real life 
are here omitted. The glory of each we are 
made to feel in its detachment, the smooth- 
flowing insinuating style of the one is set in 
contrast with the harsh energy of the other. 
This is the distinctive method of Tennyson. 
We wrong him in demanding from him rounded 
figures of men and women. He gives us ac- 
tuality as the Romanticists had urged; but 
it is fragmentary actuality, subtle studies of 
psychologic moods. So had Milton studied 
gladness and sobriety, and in his "Allegro" 
and "Penseroso" assembled from the living 
world whatever feeds the special temper of 
each. 

It might seem that such a method would 



260 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

be applicable to brief poems only; but Tenny- 
son uses it in serial form to fashion long ones 
also, and several of these are among his best. 
The rooms and pictures of "The Palace of 
Art" reflect the conflicting moods of its soli- 
tary inhabitant: !^ 

"Full of great rooms and small the palace stood, 
All various, each a perfect whole 
From living nature, fit for every mood 
And change of my still soul." 

In "The Dream of Fair Women": — 

" Shape chases shape as swift as, when to land 
Bluster the winds and tides the selfsame way. 
Crisp foam-flakes scud along the level sands, 
Torn from the fringe of spray." 

In "The Vision of Sin" the moody sections 
are parted by the five times repeated stanza 
beginning "Fill the cup and fill the can." And 
though in "Locksley Hall" the moods are less 
sharply sundered, it is their sequence which 
gives its clamorous unity to the poem. 

In meditating on immortality our emotions 
are peculiarly open to change. We can hardly 
contemplate that many-sided mystery with 
an even mind. Tennyson follows our waver- 
ing hopes with as much system as they will 
bear in "The Two Voices"; but in "In Me- 



ALFRED TENNYSON 261 

moriam " he abandons all connection, sets each 
mood entirely free and allows it space to tinge 
with emotion a considerable portion of the 
outer and inner world. Each section thus be- 
comes the accurate embodiment of a single 
mood, the whole forming a kind of compen- 
dium of sorrow. In "Maud" the moods of the 
sequent sections are more varied and dra- 
matic and the total monologue possesses 
greater unity, though the subject awakens less 
sympathy. In these two poems Tennyson's 
method reaches its completest expression. By 
it a new type of poetry is formed, a type 
peculiarly intimate. The Romantic move- 
ment advances into regions more free from 
conventionality and richer in personal ex- 
perience than any predecessor had explored. 

It is natural that after their death reaction 
should set in against such poetic sovereigns 
as Pope and Tennyson. The latter 's poetic 
craftsmanship and psychological subtlety are 
not the qualities most prized by men of to- 
day. We underrate the enormous enrichment 
which Tennyson has given to our poetry and 
overestimate the limitations which such merits 
as his involve. A brief statement of those 
limitations will enable the reader to under- 



262 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

stand why English poetry could not pause 
where Tennyson left it. 

Tennyson is entirely a poet of the inner life, 
and of that life exhibited in its most personal 
and shifting phases. While his observations of 
nature are extraordinarily exact and varied, 
he rarely erects them into themes for verse, 
but holds them as decorations and back- 
grounds. Such preoccupation with emotion 
easily goes over into sentimentalism and mor- 
bidity, especially in an age constitutionally 
disposed to pride itself on its sensitiveness in 
matters of feeling. Mid-Victorianism took 
itself pretty seriously. Its "earnest" writers 
seem incapable of losing themselves in objec- 
tive interests. They introspect a great deal 
which is not worth inspection. And Tenny- 
son reflects pretty fully the strength and 
weaknesses of a time which it pleases us to 
think we have outgrown. 

On account, too, of the very method which 
gives him his greatest claim to originality, 
Tennyson's men and women never seem quite 
real beings but rather dream-creatures, em- 
bodiments of a single feeling, quite too fine 
and frail for the working world. A hearty 
laugh would blow most of them to pieces. 



ALFRED TENNYSON 263 

Many feel — I do not — that Tennyson is 
too conscious in workmanship, that his poems 
are not "chiefly lyrical," but are thought- 
products where nothing is left to the impulse 
of the moment. These cavillers wish he would 
occasionally show a little recklessness and 
"snatch a grace beyond the reach of art." 
This is to ask that a man's genius be changed 
to yield what belongs to a different tempera- 
ment. Where a certain type of genius is so 
nearly supreme and precious, it is well to wel- 
come its products and look elsewhere for those 
of another sort. Yet no doubt the tendency 
to elaboration exposes Tennyson to one of 
his gravest dangers, an over luxuriance of 
style. He who sets out consciously to con- 
struct beauty may easily miss its simple charm 
and produce something which we feel to be 
too highly perfumed. It is a danger which 
Tennyson shares with the whole Romantic 
School. From it the Classicist is saved by 
making clearness and unity outrank all other 
literary excellence. 

I am far from enumerating in this chapter 
all the virtues of Tennyson. On the contrary, 
my aim has been to fix attention on merely 
two, his consummate craftsmanship and his 



264 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

delineation of specific moods. But apart from 
merits like these, and in qualities which all 
poets in some degree alike possess, Tennyson 
is preeminent. Few writers employ a dic- 
tion so largely monosyllabic or can pack so 
much matter into so few words. Then too 
beyond all other modern poets he has the 
power of the magic phrase. On every page 
gleams some sentence, unmistakably his, 
which stirs in us some such pleasure as does 
a conceit of Donne's, though substituting 
elusive ease for manifest effort. If in an 
anonymous volume we should fall upon this 
description of Enid, 

"But o'er her meek eyes came a happy mist, 
Like that which kept the heart of Eden green 
Before the useful trouble of the rain " 

should we not delightedly exclaim "Tenny- 
son, and no other!" 



SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 

Of the earlier poems, read "The Miller's Daughter," 
"The Lady of Shalott," "The Palace of Art," "The 
Lotos-Eaters," "Ulysses," "Locksley Hall," "Sir Gala- 
had," "The Brook," "A Farewell." 

From the middle period: "The Daisy," "Ode on the 
Duke of Wellington," "The Northern Farmer," "The 
Flower," "Flower in the Crannied Wall," "Wages," "The 
Higher Pantheism." 

From the later period: "The Revenge," "To Virgil," 
"Early Spring," "The Oak," "Merlin and the Gleam," 
" Crossing the Bar. 

Tennyson's interpolated songs are so characteristic 
that a few must be mentioned. From "The Princess": 
"As thro' the land"; "Blow, bugle, blow"; "Tears, idle 
tears"; "Ask me no more"; "Come down, O maid." 
From the "Idylls": "Blow, trumpet," from "The Com- 
ing of Arthur"; "Turn, Fortime," from "The Marriage 
of Geraint"; "In Love, if love be love," from "Merlin 
and Vivien"; "Late, late, too late," from "Guinevere." 

Some of Tennyson's best metrical work is in "Maud." 
Of the "Idylls" probably "Elaine" is the usual favorite. 
"In Memoriam" is of such even excellence that there is 
no need of commending single sections to a young reader. 
Read anywhere. 

Tennyson studies the moods of nature as searchingly 
as he does those of mankind. His practice might be well 
illustrated by gathering what he has said about trees, 
clouds, or stars. But perhaps the accuracy and variety of 
his observation are most impressive in his sea pieces. Of 
these I print a fragmentary collection: 



266 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

Tennyson's Sea Pieces 

But while the two were sleeping, a full tide 

Rose with ground swell, which on the foremost rocks 

Touching, upjetted in spirts of wild sea smoke 

And scaled in sheets of wasteful foam and fell 

On vast sea cataracts — ever and anon 

Dead claps of thunder from within the cliflFs 

Heard thro' the living roar. 

I heard the water lapping on the crag, 
And the long ripple washing in the reeds. 

And watch the curled white of the coming wave 
Glassed in the slippery sand before it breaks. 

The points of the foam in the dusk came playing about 
oiu" feet. 

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks. 

The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs, the deep 

Moans round with many voices. 

The league-long roller, thundering on the reef. 

The hollow ocean-ridges, roaring into cataracts. 

The great waters break 
Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves. 
Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud. 
From less and less to nothing. 

The myriad roaring ocean, light and shadow illimitable. 

Roared as when the roaring breakers boom and blanch 
on the precipices. 



ALFRED TENNYSON 267 

The waste voice of the bond-breaking sea. 

As on a dull day in an ocean cave 

The blind wave feeling round his long sea hall 

In silence. 

The bay was oily calm; the harbor buoy 
With one green sparkle ever and anon 
Dipt by itself, and we were glad at heart. 

The liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea. 

The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land. 

I would the white cold plunging foam. 
Whirled by the wind, had rolled me deep below 
Then when I left my home. 

A still salt pool, locked in with bars of sand. 

Left on the shore; that hears all night 
The plunging seas draw backward from the land 

Their moon-led waters white. 

A wild wave in the wide North Sea, 
Green-glimmering toward the summit, bears with all 
Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies 
Down on a bark, and overbears the bark 
And him that helms it. 

Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung shipwrecking 

roar. 
Now to the scream of a maddened beach dragged down 

by the wave. 

The sharp wind that ruffles all day long 
A little bitter pool about a stone 
On a bare coast. 



268 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

As one that climbs a peak to gaze 
O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud 
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night, 
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore. 
And suck the blinding splendor from the sand. 
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn, 
Expimge the world. 

A ripple on the boundless deep 
Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself 
Forever changing form, but evermore 
One with the boundless motion of the deep. 

A full sea glazed with mufHed moonlight. 

Lift up thy rocky face 
And shelter when the storms are black 
In many a streaming torrent back 

The seas that shock thy base. 

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls. 

Far ran the naked moon across 
The houseless ocean's heaving field. 

They watched the great sea fall. 
Wave after wave, each mightier than the last. 
Till last a ninth one, gathering half the deep 
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged 
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame. 

One showed an iron coast and angry waves. 
You seemed to hear them rise and fall 

And roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves 
JBeneath the windy wall. 



ALFRED TENNYSON 269 

Such a tide as moving seems asleep. 

Too full for sound and foam. 
When that which drew from out the boundless 
deep 

Turns again home. 



vni 

Robert Browning 



VIII 

ROBERT BROWNING 

Hakdly another poet in the whole course of 
EngHsh literature has met with such violent 
and continuous partisanship as Robert Brown- 
ing. When Wordsworth put forth his epoch- 
making little volume of "Lyrical Ballads," he 
too met derision, but it lasted only twenty 
years. By the time he reached middle age his 
position as a master was assured, and his limi- 
tations were well understood. Over Browning 
disputation has continued longer. Through- 
out his life and during the quarter-century 
since his death he has had ardent assailants 
and just as ardent defenders. Persons of stand- 
ing declare the man a barbarian, who broke 
into the fair fields of verse with poetry caco- 
phonous in sound, obscure in expression, and 
shocking in subject. On the other hand, there 
are those who regard Browning as half divine. 
He is a prophet, they say, and has so disclosed 
to them the significance of their personal lives 
that they cannot hear any criticism of him 
without a shiver. Sometimes Browning is set 



274 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

up in laudatory antagonism to Tennyson, or 
Tennyson in antagonism to Browning, and 
certainly these poets do differ fundamentally. 
But are their differences disparaging or sup- 
plemental? I beheve I shall find the safest 
approach to my heated subject if, without 
praise or blame, I coolly note some of the 
points of contrast between the two. 

Tennyson is English for many generations; 
Browning is of compound nationality. Tenny- 
son lived in England and found his subjects 
there; Browning lived long on the continent 
and gathered his subjects from everywhere 
except England. Tennyson is a university 
man; Browning had a miscellaneous educa- 
tion. Tennyson is acquainted with physical 
science; Browning only with literature, many 
literatures. Tennyson's life is rooted in in- 
stitutions; Browning cares little for them. 
Tennyson has a strong interest in the social 
and religious questions of his age; Browning 
only in the problem of self-development. 
Through many generations Tennyson was con- 
nected with the Established Church; Brown- 
ing, his parents, and his wife were Congre- 
gationalists. Tennyson was an idealistic re- 
cluse; Browning a realistic man of the world. 



ROBERT BROWNmG 275 

Tennyson's figures are generalized; Brown- 
ing's particularized. Tennyson's favorite time 
is that of the mediaeval myth; Browning's the 
later Renaissance. Tennyson aims at beauty, 
through approved and standard language; 
Browning at force and expressiveness. Tenny- 
son chooses for subjects graceful and har- 
monious incidents; Browning unusual and 
startling ones. Tennyson is the conscious 
artist, ever correcting; Browning the spon- 
taneous improvisatore. Tennyson has an 
exceptional mastery of poetic technique; 
Browning is rugged and bizarre. Tennyson 
has many of the traits of a refined and timid 
woman; Browning is all manliness and op- 
timism. Tennyson was a dramatist at the end 
of his life; Browning at the beginning. 

^Vhat amazing contrasts are here! Yet the 
two poets never conceived of themselves as 
rivals. On the contrary, Tennyson inscribed 
his "Tiresias" thus: "To my good friend, 
Robert Browning, whose genius and geniality 
will best appreciate what may be best, and 
make most allowance for what is worst, this 
volume is affectionately dedicated." And 
Browning had earlier written in his volume 
of "Selections" these careful words: "Dedi- 



276 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

cated to Alfred Tennyson. In poetry — illus- 
trious and consummate. In friendship — 
noble and sincere." It will not then become 
us to take sides in the fictitious antagonism. 
Rather, in considering Browning, we must lay 
aside partisanship and endeavor — however 
contentious be the ground — to inquire dispas- 
sionately what Browning stands for. What is 
his type. 5^ 

To determine this, let us for a moment 
turn back to the Classicists, as their work 
culminated in Pope, and recall how largely 
with them poetry was removed from ordi- 
nary life, from the life at least of the individual. 
It was a social affair. Its figures were culti- 
vated men and women who appear convers- 
ing with their kind. Literature accordingly 
stood, as it were, somewhat apart from ordi- 
nary existence, having its own laws, its own 
diction. It was not called on to mirror my 
life or your life, or to use the language of our 
homes. Of course as time went on, and es- 
pecially as the followers of Pope cheapened 
his refined standards, there came a revolt, 
and individual life was declared to be the im- 
portant thing. When then Wordsworth, as 
the leader of this Romantic Movement, sets 



ROBERT BROWNING 277 

out to depict the actualities of experience, 
we should expect him to bring before us men 
and women as we find them on the street. 
But this he did not do. While turning away 
from artificial human nature and studying 
with penetrating veracity genuine persons, he 
was chiefly interested in those central emo- 
tions which build up homes and states, and 
rather oblivious to such momentary changes 
as, going on in all of us, differentiate man from 
man. Precisely to these Tennyson devotes 
himself and thus gives to naturalistic verse 
a psychological depth it had not previously 
known. But he studies moods rather than 
persons. The single phases of humanity so 
vividly set forth by him do not properly be- 
long to John, Thomas, or Susan, but are uni- 
versal, though temporary, aspects of any 
human being. The companions of Ulysses 
whom we meet in Lotus Land cannot be dis- 
tinguished from one another. Edward Gray's 
melancholy over Ellen Adair might as well 
have been that of Peter Robinson for Mary 
Brown. How characterless is Maud! "Dead 
perfection, no more." The delightful Grand- 
mother is so grandmotherly as to belong to 
no special race, time, or village. All these 



278 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

people are abstractions, representative of single 
traits, with as little blood in them as any 
figure of Ben Jonson's or Dickens'. Novelists 
— Richardson, Fielding, Scott, Miss Aus- 
ten — had long before made their readers ac- 
quainted with total human beings. But none 
such had yet appeared in poetry, unless in 
the pages of that half poet, half novelist, 
Crabbe. Neither Byron, Shelley, nor Keats 
knows anything of living men and women. 

There is then something still to be done if 
poetry will listen to Wordsworth's call, and, 
abandoning conventions, deal with the reali- 
ties of common life. Whoever can make us 
feel the complex and unstable unity of an 
individual person will introduce a new and 
highly important type into English poetry. 
This is the aim of Browning, and from it 
spring most of his peculiarities. Announce- 
ment of that aim is made in the preface to 
"Sordello," where he writes: "My stress lay 
on the incidents in the development of a soul. 
Little else is worth study." Accordingly 
Browning pays the least possible attention to 
outward nature. Only two or three of his 
poems set forth nature at all. There is "De 
Gustibus," "The Englishman in Italy," and 



ROBERT BROWTVING 279 

"Home Thoughts from Abroad." Is there 
another in which nature is the theme, or 
even where, as in Tennyson, nature forms a 
sympathetic background for human action? 
Browning's figures need no background. They 
stand firmly on their own feet. The disposi- 
tion then to turn to individual life and, with- 
out apology or attempt to justify the choice 
of subject by any lesson it might teach; sim- 
ply to say, "The precious thing in all the world 
is the personal being. WTiatever he does and 
says deserves attention" — this democratic 
individualism is what gives distinction to 
Browning, though it was also the special gos- 
pel of his age. Carlyle, Emerson, Arnold, 
John Stuart Mill, George Eliot, were all pro- 
claiming it. Browning gives it appropriate 
form in poetry. The circumstances of his life 
shaped him admirably for the work. 

That life is six years shorter than Tenny- 
son's, beginning three years later and ending 
three years earlier; that is, it extends from 
1812 to 1889. It divides itself into four 
periods, in close parallelism to those of Ten- 
nyson. Like his too they are entirely Hter- 
ary periods, not periods formed by outward 
events. The first we may call his Juvenile 



280 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

period, from his birth to 1828, a momentous 
date in Browning's Hfe; for he then fell in 
with the poems of Shelley. The second is his 
period of Experiment, from 1828 to 1840 or 
1842, the publication of the "Bells and Pome- 
granates." Then comes his period of Mastery, 
when at last he has found himself, knows 
exactly what his work in the world is to be, 
and sets eagerly about it. This period runs 
from the "Bells and Pomegranates" to "The 
Ring and the Book" in 1870 — or if we will 
be exact, 1869. The last is his period of De- 
cline and Sophistry, from 1870 to 1889. Of 
this last I shall say little, except that, while 
it contains many bits of vigorous verse, his 
fame would, in my judgment, be more secure 
if all written after "The Ring and the Book" 
could be struck out. It is the early periods 
which require attention. K we would rightly 
measure Browning's subsequent stature, we 
must carefully observe his growth. 

He was a city boy, born at Camber well, a 
suburb of London. In cities he always made 
his home, using the country merely for occa- 
sional refreshment. Tennyson spent three 
quarters of his life in the country; by birth 
and education he is connected with the ruling 



ROBERT BROWNING 281 

class. Browning belongs with the average 
multitude. Probably his great-grandfather 
was a waiter at a country inn. His grand- 
father came to London, entered the service 
of the Bank of England, and rose rapidly to 
prominence and considerable wealth. From 
sharing in this wealth his second wife cut off 
the children of the first marriage. Browning's 
father was therefore obliged to care for him- 
self and was unable to obtain a university 
education. He too became a clerk in the Bank 
of England, where by diligence he ultimately 
attained something more than a competence. 
Having always an eager desire for knowledge, 
he accumulated a library of six or seven thou- 
sand volumes and was able to use books in 
French, German, and Italian. He was a genial 
man, fond of drawing and writing stories, and 
had always a special fancy for whatever was 
curious and unusual. 

I have called Browning a man of composite 
ancestry, and the fact affected, I believe, the 
interests of his whole life. His father was an 
Englishman, his mother a Scotch woman, her 
father a German merchant of Hamburg. His 
own father's mother was a Creole from the 
West Indies. Four nationalities contribute to 



282 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

the formation of this extraordinary man; and 
it has been surmised, though on slender evi- 
dence, that there was also Jewish blood in 
him. May not these diversities within himself 
have broadened his sympathies and fitted him 
more readily than would have been possible 
had he been thoroughly an Englishman, to 
comprehend and create the many strange 
creatures who move across his pages? 

His education was similarly miscellaneous. 
The atmosphere of his home was literary, 
and his own early literary tastes were strong. 
But they were entirely unguided by the re- 
straints and standards of a university or even 
of continuous schooling. For only a few years 
at a time was he connected with any school. 
For less than a year when he was fifteen he 
attended a Greek class at London Univer- 
sity. From that time his father's library was, 
as it had always really been, his chief source 
of intellectual nourishment. His constant 
reading of unusual books made him self-edu- 
cated and a scholar. Music too he loved, and 
under the stimulating guidance of his friend, 
Eliza Flower, he became an adept in musical 
science. Strange that one of the harshest of 
modern poets should also be one of the most 
accomplished in music! 



ROBERT BROWNING 283 

Early in life he showed a taste for poetry 
and began to write it. His father had been 
bred in the Classical tradition and looked with 
disfavor on Romanticism. His Hbrary was rich 
too in the Metaphysical poets. Quarles and 
Donne early became favorites of young Brown- 
ing. By the time he was twelve years old he 
had written a little volume of verse, which 
he desired to publish under the title of "In- 
condita." Thus early appears the taste for 
fantastic titles. The manuscript was sub- 
mitted to the critical judgment of a London 
editor, Rev. W. G. Fox, who advised against 
its publication, and it was destroyed. But it 
brought him, besides a wise critic, two deeply 
valued friends introduced by Mr. Fox, the 
Misses Flower. Both wrote verse; Sarah, the 
younger, being the author of the hymn, 
"Nearer, my God, to thee, " and the elder, 
Eliza, nine years older than Browning, con- 
tinuing for a long time the object of his ro- 
mantic devotion. Her he ideahzed in Pauline. 
When in boyhood he declared that he wished 
to devote his life to poetry, his indulgent 
parents did not gainsay him. He accordingly 
was prepared for no profession, but in his fa- 
ther's Ubrary took all literature for his province. 



284 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

In 1828 something momentous happened. 
Browning came upon a copy of Shelley's 
"Queen Mab," and persuaded his mother to 
give him the rest of Shelley's poems on his 
next birthday. A new conception of poetry 
was now opened to him. Byron he had known 
before. But Shelley disclosed to him the full 
freedom of Romanticism, its mysticism, its 
magical music, its penetrating exploration of 
the human soul. Yet I cannot help thinl:ing 
that he, like Tennyson, made a false start. 
Shelley's genius and his own were at the far- 
thest possible remove. Tennyson, after gain- 
ing a certain fluency from Byron, withdrew 
promptly and unharmed to his own proper 
field. But Browning spent nearly ten years 
over the impossible task of writing pieces as 
shapeless as those of Shelley. He always f felt 
gratitude for the one who first awoke him, 
but after 1840 abandoned him as a guide. 

We all know the twofold character of Shel- 
ley. He is the inspired lyrist, panting forth 
a flood of rapture so divine as few poets of 
plaintive passion have equalled in any land. 
And then he is the creator of "Queen Mab," 
** Alastor," and the rest of that ungainly crew, 
who at inordinate length preach the theories 



ROBERT BROWNING 285 

of Godwin and the dreams of the French 
Revolution. The lyric Shelley, the seer, lay 
obviously beyond Browning's reach; but in 
the expository Shelley, the teacher, there was 
something which for a time strongly attracted 
him. In pursuit of it he wrote "Pauline," 
"Paracelsus," "Sordello" — all attempts, as 
he says in the preface to "Sordello," to trace 
through successive stages the development 
of a soul. The long poem, with this sort of 
Pilgrim's Progress as its subject, was much 
in the fashion of the day. Shelley's "Alastor" 
gave it impetus among the intellectuals, 
Daily's "Festus" among the populace. Words- 
worth shaped it into a masterpiece in his 
"Prelude." No wonder that Browning, who 
was to become a closer student of character 
than any previous poet, felt himself drawn 
to it at the beginning of his career. In 1833, 
three years after Tennyson's "Poems Chiefly 
Lyrical" appeared (and it will be remembered 
that there was three years' difiFerence in the 
ages of the two poets). Browning put forth 
"Pauline," following her in 1835 with "Par- 
acelsus," and in 1840 with "Sordello." In 
each of these, by different methods, he at- 
tempted to trace the formation of a particu- 



286 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

lar individual throughout the entire extent 
of his Hfe; to see him aspiring, faihng, groping 
and ever moving from a small understand- 
ing of himself and the world to a large. All 
these books were pubHshed at the expense of 
members of Browning's family, and all failed. 
Few copies were sold and little notice of them 
was taken. Here and there were readers in- 
trepid enough to find their way through the 
literary jungle to merit. But they were nat- 
urally few. 

Already, however, in 1837 the actor Mac- 
ready thought he could detect underneath the 
intricacies of Browning's early books a talent 
for portraying character. He asked Browning 
for a play, and "Strafford" was produced 
five nights at Covent Garden. It was expected 
to run three weeks. Browning and his hard- 
ened eulogists have always blamed the actors 
for its withdrawal; but a single reading should 
convince any one that the play itself made 
failure inevitable. Yet the attempt at play- 
writing formed an important second step in 
Browning's advance toward individual por- 
traiture. 

The method first tried had been a serial one, 
stage succeeding stage in the development of 



ROBERT BROWNING 287 

a person. It had proved too theoretic, vague, 
and dilatory for a genius so forcibly concrete 
as Browning. A drama removes these objec- 
tionable features. A rounded individual is 
then at once thrown open to inspection, as he 
sets forth his own point of view in contrast 
with that of opposing characters. This would 
seem to be the very field in which Browning 
would shine. For half a dozen years he thought 
so, and spoke of himself as "Robert Browning, 
writer of plays." Each year saw a new trag- 
edy fall from his rapid pen. Occasionally, as 
in the first two acts of "Pippa Passes," some- 
thing vivid and memorable was produced. But 
in general, Browning's plays lack distinction. 
Long speeches occur where swift action is 
needed. The plot is obviously managed, in- 
stead of unfolding itself, and the characters, 
though often strange, are unimpressive. Grad- 
ually it became plain, even to Browning him- 
self, that he had not yet found his proper field. 
In 1841 a new project was formed. Since 
managers refused his plays and the public 
his books. Browning's father arranged with 
Moxon to issue a play from time to time in 
pamphlet form. For the series Browning 
chose the repellent name of "Bells and Pome- 



288 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

granates." Few copies selling, even at the 
tempting price of sixpence, Moxon suggested 
that some poems of a briefer sort be added; 
and accordingly in the third number, in 1842, 
appeared the beginning of that wonderful 
series of "Dramatic Lyrics" in which Brown- 
ing at last found his sure mode of expression. 

The form of these pieces is the monologue, 
the drama of a single speaker. So peculiarly 
suited to Browning is the scheme that we 
are apt to think it his invention. But it has 
been used in all periods of English poetry. 
Drayton's "Heroical Epistles" are mono- 
logues; so are Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard" and 
Cowper's "Alexander Selkirk." Tennyson in 
"St. Simeon Stylites" employed it as early, 
and afterwards almost as frequently, as 
Browning himself; in "Maud" giving it 
greater variety than does Browning in "James 
Lee's Wife." No, in the monologue Browning 
merely accepted a not uncommon form as 
an instrument for painting individual charac- 
ter more accurately than was possible in the 
sequent study of a single soul or the conver- 
sation of a contrasted group. As soon as 
Browning had created the Dramatic Lyric he 
abandoned play-writing altogether. The new 



ROBERT BROWNING 289 

method preserved all that was valuable both 
in it and its lumbering predecessor, attained 
the full individualism at which Romanticism 
had long unsuccessfully aimed, introduced 
a new type into English poetry, and brought 
before its readers such a company of living 
men and women as it had not seen since Chau- 
cer died. 

For Browning added elements to the mono- 
logue which greatly increased its power and 
adapted it to his special work. They do not 
appear in all his pieces in equal degree. But 
about in proportion to their presence and 
prominence is the importance of the poem. 
As they become blurred, the monologue loses 
something of its quality. They are these: (1) 
His monologue is dramatic, addressed to a 
listener. (2) It is psychological, disclosing 
the speaker rather than what is spoken of. 
(3) It is comprehensive and sums up a com- 
plex and habitual character. I will explain 
briefly each of these points. 

Browning's monologue at its best — as in 
"Andrea del Sarto," "Fra Lippo Lippi/' 
"Clive," "The Laboratory," "In a Year" 
— is no mere soliloquy, a piece of introspec- 
tive analysis, as most preceding monologues 



290 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

had been. His are veritable dramas, involving 
several persons, to only one of whom do we 
attend. The mind of him who speaks is every- 
where in contact with another mind, which it 
seeks to bring over to its own point of view. 
It is as if we stood by a telephone and heard 
its user speak to a distant friend, and were 
left to guess at the situation by the fragmen- 
tary utterances of only one side. But it is 
dialogue still. An unseen interlocutor is there, 
and what we hear has constant reference to 
his thought. Undoubtedly there are shadings 
between such completed monologues and 
soliloquy. In "The Ring and the Book" most 
of the speakers seek to impress their own view 
of the case on definite persons. The Pope does 
not. He is alone and soliloquizes. But his is 
not like Abt Volger's or Johannes Agricola's, 
mere soliloquy; for he addresses a plea for 
mercy or condemnation to God, the Church, 
public opinion, and argues it out with each. 
The dramatic advantage of such monologue 
over the ordinary play lies in the concentra- 
tion of interest. Where all else is subordi- 
nated to a single individual, we more readily 
identify ourselves with him than if he were 
but one of a group. 



ROBERT BROWNING 291 

But if the monologue, unlike the soliloquy, 
has an objective reference to a supposed au- 
ditor and outward situation, our interest is 
not fixed on these. On the contrary, they are 
but a means for giving to the speaker an im- 
portance greater even than he has in the solil- 
oquy, and far greater than in the narrative. 
They might be compared to a sounding-board, 
reflecting back in fuller tone the character of 
the speaker. In judging another, we judge 
ourselves. Our estimate of a person or event 
may be incorrect; but if given at an un- 
guarded moment, it is stamped with the im- 
press of him who makes it. This is the pro- 
found truth on which Browning's monologue 
is based. In order to present a person, it is 
unnecessary to trace successive "incidents 
in the development of a soul," to watch the 
man's behavior in society, or to hear him solil- 
oquize. There is a shorter and more illumin- 
_ating way. A minute of a life as truly con- 
tains the character as fifty years. If we would 
know what a man is, we have only to throw 
a flashlight on him at a crisis-moment and 
watch his reaction. That is Browning's new 
method. The serial scaffolding is torn down, 
the group dismissed, the narrative suppressed. 



292 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

Only the dramatic essence remains — a mind 
reacting on a defined person and situation. 
The first ten years of Browning's authorship 
had been spent on the sohloquy, the narra- 
tive, and the play; and the first two of these 
were still to ravage his last twenty years. 
Even during his years of Mastery the narra- 
tive appears as late as 1845 in the beautiful 
"Italian in England," the soliloquy in "Christ- 
mas Eve" of 1850, and something like a play 
in "In a Balcony" of 1853. But these forms 
are now subordinate. A shorter and more 
luminous method has been found. 

It should be noticed too that while Brown- 
ing's flashlight is usually a brief affair, it il- 
luminates not a single mood but a total com- 
plex individual. For this it is peculiarly fitted. 
Tennyson shows us in "Sir Galahad" only 
chivalric purity; but Browning's Duke, dis- 
playing the picture of his last Duchess, is 
himself a full-length portrait. His dignity, 
courtesy, cruelty, interest in sculpture, in 
painting, unite, unconsciously and without 
exaggeration, to show this cross-section of a 
Renaissance aristocrat. As Browning's aim, 
too, is not moral instruction but the dispas- 
sionate study of individual character, good 



ROBERT BROWNING 293 

and evil qualities are allowed to intertwine in 
the same perplexing fashion as in actual life. 

Here then is a new and majestic type, and 
one of deep consequence for the depicting of 
humanity in English poetry. Of course Words- 
worth, Tennyson, and Browning all alike deal 
with human nature. But Wordsworth deals 
with its fundamentals, Tennyson with its 
single moods, and only after long waiting does 
individual man come to his own. With Brown- 
ing the creation of character is its own abun- 
dant justification. When a poet can truly 
say, "Here they are, my fifty men and women," 
we have no right to ask if they are such as 
will be socially valuable. 

Nor must we be disturbed at certain un- 
pleasing characteristics sure to mark the work 
of such a poet. Laying stress on the individ- 
ual factor in life rather than the social, he 
will be disposed to care little for beauty, good 
taste, and conventional refinement, and will 
pick out subjects that are peculiar, erratic, 
even abnormal. In boyhood Browning cared 
for strange pets, bizarre stories, forced rhymes. 
They prepared him for his realistic work. 
His poems introduce us to people who are 
half insane — Porphyria's Lover, Giraldus, 



294 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

Childe Roland — or to those morally repul- 
sive, like Fifine, Sludge, and Guido Franees- 
chini. Yet when abnormal persons are shown 
to be living creatures, our hearts beat in 
sympathetic response. Nothing human is 
without interest. But it must be remembered 
that if these strange beings are to be trans- 
ferred imaginatively to printed pages, they 
will use their own language. It would be bad 
art to offer them the standard language, such 
as is current among ladies and gentlemen. 
Not being ladies and gentlemen, they should 
use the language which accords with their 
special character. It will not do to be shocked 
at a diction unheard in poetry before. 

On similar grounds some excuse may be 
found for Browning's notorious obscurities. 
They spring from fecundity, not feebleness. 
He can say anything he pleases, and say it 
with utmost precision. But what pleases him 
does not always please us. He is a man richly 
endowed, venturing into strange regions. His 
crowding thoughts often obtrude on one an- 
other, and if we fail to catch his point of 
view, we do not readily comprehend him. 
From usual modes of speech, as from usual 
characters, he is constitutionally averse. In 



ROBERT BROWNING 295 

a letter in my possession sent him from New 
Zealand, in 1846, by his friend Alfred Domett 
— the "Waring" of his poem — Domett 
writes: "As regards your books, I have one 
first and last request to make or advice to 
give you. Do for Heaven's sake try to be com- 
monplace. Strain as much for it as weaker 
poets do against it. And always write for 
fools. Think of them as your audience, in- 
stead of the Sidneys and Marvells and Lan- 
dors. Ask some one — the dullest, plodding- 
est acquaintance you have — how he or she 
(if you can find a woman quite stupid enough) 
would have expressed your thought, and take 
his or her arrangement. Will you do this? I 
fear not. Yet I know that herein lies your tru- 
est course." Browning preserved the letter 
but rejected the advice. As an improvisatore 
of singular genius, he could learn nothing from 
criticism. The more the public grumbled, the 
more firmly he set his teeth and walked his 
devious way. We may regret that he could 
not, like Tennyson, draw aid from his enemies. 
But genius has its limitations and compul- 
sions. He was not writing for others, but 
merely to create children of his brain, writing 
for himself. All we can ask of such a man is 



Z96 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

that he accept good-naturedly the isolation 
involved in his work. Browning did not do 
so, but from time to time bitterly complained 
that he was not understood. So individual a 
writer, attempting an altogether new line 
should have been as indifferent to public 
opinion as was Wordsworth. Browning was 
resentful of disparagement and strangely 
tolerant of organized adulation. Some social 
feeling is apt to linger about the extremest 
individualist. 

Yet while the creation of individual charac- 
ters was the special function of Browning, he 
was not always able to carry it out dispas- 
sionately. He too was an individual, pos- 
sessed of beliefs, moral approvals, and a tem- 
perament of his own. Through these he views 
the characters he constructs, and by these 
they are liable to be distorted. A great poet 
is distinguished from a poetic writer by the 
very fact that he has acquired a fixed point of 
view from which to survey all that comes be- 
fore him. Nobody can be impressive without 
a creed, gospel, or set of habitual ideas with 
which he confronts the world. What we may 
call the creed of Browning is, if I rightly under- 
stand it, something like this : 



ROBERT BROWNING 297 

To each man there is intrusted a unique 
character, unlike all others, but incomplete, 
and with higher and lower possibilities. Which 
of these possibilities shall prevail is determined 
by the man's own action at crisis-moments, 
which in themselves are often small. Sin, for 
Browning, is therefore, for the most part, in- 
jury to one's self rather than to society; and 
conventional sins are little regarded. The 
world is for each of us a place of moral train- 
ing and discipline, and has meaning only as 
material out of which a person may be formed. 
A world so constituted implies a God, whose 
existence cannot be independently proved 
but is involved in the whole framework of 
things. His presence is testified to by the 
Bible and by the consciousness of all men at 
their highest. This God is a being of power 
and knowledge, though still like ourselves. 
In ourselves we see that power and knowledge 
are merely instrumental to love, which is the 
highest manifestation of personality. Were 
God without love, we should be his superiors. 
Browning does not then conceive God as 
manifested in law, that is, in scientific fashion; 
but as the life-principle of love, in an individ- 
ualistic way. Matter is but a lower form of 



298 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

spirit, and what look like circumstances are, 
in reality, only a reflex of the person. God 
lovingly imparts to us the germs of his own life. 
Consequently there is an immortality of ac- 
tivity open to each of us, whether in ever fresh 
existence or in a single continuous existence. 
But recognition will always be possible. Any- 
thing but optimism is stupid and cowardly. 

Such in briefest outline is Browning's creed, 
the body of ideas through which he interprets 
the world. A noble creed it is, with which in 
substance I heartily agree. Yet it is not the 
primary business of an artist to inculcate doc- 
trine. Doctrine, of course, will underlie his 
work, just as it underlies all life. Our world 
is bound together by laws or principles, which 
no true representation of it can disregard. 
But they are mixed with things, and to de- 
tach them for separate statement destroys 
that concrete unity which it is the artist's 
office to discover and present. We may say, 
if we like, that Hamlet teaches the dangers of 
delay, and Antony those of impulse. But the 
plays were not constructed for that purpose. 
Shakspere sought merely to present an in- 
teresting section of human life, and did it with 
such truth that we can draw from it a moral 



ROBERT BROWNING 299 

lesson, as we can from nature itself. The 
artist is primarily a seer, not a teacher. His 
characters and situations are no mere means 
to moral instruction as ends. They are them- 
selves their own end. 

Now notwithstanding Browning's extraor- 
dinary power of artistic creation, he will not 
always submit to its laws, but often puts into 
a poem matter which the subject does not 
demand. He has some theory to maintain, 
some lesson to impart, some clever thought has 
struck him, and he steps forward to offer his 
own ideas instead of leaving us to view the 
mind of an imagined character. No doubt it 
was difficult to be a dispassionate expositor. 
His beliefs were clear and urgent, and it is 
much more natural for the Englishman and 
American to turn to moralizing than to art. 
The art-sense is feeble among readers to-day. 
Then too strong influences were unhappily 
brought to bear, impelling Browning away 
from his unique office of character-creator to 
be the deliverer of a moral "message." Read 
the following passage from one of the letters 
of Miss Barrett to him just after he had dis- 
covered his new method and had begun to 
apply it in constructive work. On May 26, 



300 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

1846, immediately preceding their marriage 
she writes: 

"But you — you have the superabundant 
mental life and individuality which admits of 
shifting a personality and speaking the truth 
still. That is the highest faculty, the strongest 
and rarest which exercises itself in art — we 
are all agreed there is none so great faculty 
as the dramatic. Several times you have hinted 
to me that I made you careless for the drama, 
and it has puzzled me to fancy how it could 
be, when I understand myself so clearly both 
the difficulty and the glory of dramatic art. 
Yet I am conscious of wishing you to take the 
other crown besides, and after having made 
your own creatures speak in clear human 
voices, to speak yourself out of that person- 
ality which God made, and with the voice 
which He tuned into such power and sweet- 
ness of speech. I do not think that, with all 
that music in you, only your own personality 
should be dumb, nor that having thought so 
much and deeply on life and its ends, you 
should not teach what you have learnt in the 
direct and most impressive way, the mask 
thrown off, however moist with the breath. 
And it is not, I believe, by the dramatic me- 



ROBERT BROWNING 301 

dium that poets teach most impressively. I 
have seemed to observe that! It is too diffi- 
cult for the common reader to analyze and to 
discern between the vivid and the earnest. 
Also he is apt to understand better always when 
he sees the lips move. Now here is yourself 
with your wonderful faculty ! — it is won- 
dered at and recognized on all sides where 
there are eyes to see — it is called wonderful 
and admirable! Yet with an inferior power 
you might have taken yourself closer to the 
hearts and lives of men, and made yourself 
dearer, though being less great. Therefore I 
do want you to do this with your surpassing 
power — it will be so easy to you to speak, 
and so noble when spoken. 

"Not that I use n't to fancy I could see you 
and know you, in a reflex image, in your crea- 
tions! I used, you remember. How these 
broken lights and forms look strange and un- 
like now to me when I stand by the complete 
idea! Yes, now I feel that no one can know you 
worthily by these poems. Only — I guessed 
a little. Now let us have your own voice speak- 
ing of yourself — if the voice may not hurt the 
speaker — which is my fear." 

How exquisitely said, and how poisonous! 



302 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

Not only too was this poison given by her 
who was dearest, it came from the outside 
world as well. That Dr. Furnival who founded 
the Browning Societies writes thus, in eulogy 
of Browning's Essay on Shelley: 

"The interest in this piece lay in the fact 
that Browning's utterances here are his, and 
not those of any one of the so many imagin- 
ary persons behind whom he insists on so 
often hiding himself, and whose necks I for 
one should continually like to wring, whose 
bodies I would fain kick out of the way, in 
order to get face to face with the poet himself, 
and hear his own voice speaking his own 
thoughts, man to man, and soul to soul. 
Straight speaking, straight hitting suit me 
best." 

Yes, they always suit the prosaic English- 
man best. In his mind the teacher is regu- 
larly set above the artist. In Browning's po- 
etry both are present. It is strange that when 
in a neighboring art Browning had called 
attention to this distinction between natural- 
istic portraiture and endeavor after edifica- 
tion, and given strong preference to the for- 
mer, he should so frequently in his own art 
have taken the lower course. In his poem of 



ROBERT BROWNING 303 

"Fra Lippo Lippi" we see the painter cover- 
ing the walls of his cloister with pictures of 
unmistakable men and women. Then we hear 
the Prior's reproach: 

"How? What's here? 
Quite from the mark of painting! Bless us all! 
Faces, arms, legs, and bodies, like the true 
As much as pea and pea! It's devil's game. 
Your business is not to catch men with show, 
With honor to the perishable clay. 
But lift them over it, ignore it all." 

To which Fra Lippo replies: 

"Say there's beauty with no soul at all 
(I never saw it, put the case the same). 
If you get simple beauty and naught else. 
You get about the best thing God invents." 

What a pity that Browning, abandoning nat- 
uralistic representation, for which he had as 
fine a genius as the Florentine monk, should 
so frequently have given way to sententious 
moralizings ! 

We hardly exaggerate when we say that 
there are two Brownings: one, the seer, who 
firmly and disinterestedly pursues his con- 
structive art and, having observed all the 
subtleties of a character, is satisfied if he can 
present us a living being who announces no 
"lesson"; and then there is the teacher, who 



304 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

cannot escape from himself and is busy with 
inculcating his own special creed. It is no 
wonder that as time went on, this facile teacher, 
emancipated from the restraint of character- 
building, took on more and more the voice of 
Browning, became ever more wordy, and re- 
corded more clumsily in rugged rhythms what- 
ever random reflections came into his head. 
Browning had always loved argument and 
been amused to see what might be said in 
behalf of a bad cause. This tendency to soph- 
istry grew upon him. We see it at its best in 
portions of "The Ring and the Book"; at its 
worst, in "Fifine" and in the " Parley ings." 
In Browning's last period little sense of form 
remains. He often seems to write merely in 
order to let loose the miscellaneous workings 
of his mind. Only occasionally is it worth 
while to read what follows "The Ring and the 
Book." After that time the teacher, the soph- 
ist, the random talker, are chiefly in evidence; 
the constructive artist has pretty completely 
disappeared. It may help some of my readers 
to trace for themselves the two tendencies 
in Browning if I group together a few illus- 
trative poems. Much of his work admits no 
such clear classification. The same poem often 



ROBERT BROWNING 305 

contains material of different kinds. But if 
we select a group to show Browning's power 
as a constructive artist, it will include such as 
these: "The Bishop Orders His Tomb," "An- 
drea del Sarto," "Childe Roland," "The Flight 
of the Duchess," " In a Gondola," "James Lee's 
Wife," "The Itahan in England," "Confes- 
sions," "Herve Riel," "Life at a Villa," "The 
Glove," "My Last Duchess." All these 
poems move us by the imaginative accuracy 
with which the particular person or situation 
is presented. 

A second group may show how oftentimes, 
though doctrine is evidently the object of the 
poem, it still embodies itself in concrete, per- 
sonal form: "Fra Lippo Lippi," "The Statue 
and the Bust," "Caliban Upon Setebos," 
"Saul," "Cleon," "The Strange Epistle of 
Karshish," "A Grammarian's Funeral." These 
are all intended to teach something, but they 
teach in a dramatic way. 

And then we go over into the poems of 
preaching, directly announcing abstract truths. 
A little group of the strongest would be these: 
"Abt Vogler," "One Word More," "Old Pic- 
tures in Florence," "Any Wife to any Hus- 
band," "A Death in the Desert," "Rabbi 



S06 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

Ben Ezra." The last may be regarded as Brown- 
ing's reply to Omar Khayyam; "A Death in 
the Desert," his reply to Strauss, Such verse 
makes interesting reading; but the interest is 
a moral one. It has little to do with imagina- 
tive art. 

In "The Ring and the Book," written at 
the height of his powers and after long ex- 
perimentation in other fields, Browning has 
left a complete epitome of his genius. The 
piece is of colossal proportions, original, terri- 
fic, and subtly imaginative beyond any poem 
of its century. In scope and majesty it takes 
no presumptuous place beside the glories of 
our earlier poetry, with "Troilus and Creseide," 
"The Faery Queen," "King Lear," and "Sam- 
son Agonistes." The Greeks had a way of 
choosing some hideous legend, "presenting 
Thebes or Pelops' line," and by its complete 
presentation in mellifluous language letting 
pity and fear effect their own purgation. That 
is what Browning has done. The squalid cir- 
cumstances of a Roman murder trial more 
than two centuries gone by, he has made to 
live again as a thing of beauty and moral 
significance, acquainting us with the special 
temper of its distant time and with the base- 



ROBERT BROWNING 307 

ness and exaltation which belong to human- 
ity at all times. In these twenty thousand 
lines, put together during nine years, there is 
room enough for all Browning's characteris- 
tics to find their place without damage to 
the total structure. Here are his argumenta- 
tion, his searching psychology, his wide-rang- 
ing reading and observation, his interest in 
whatever is peculiar and out of the way, his 
profound religious sense, his tenderness, bru- 
tality, and optimism, his love of mental ad- 
venture, occasionally too his mere loquacity. 
A strange mixture it is, wrought out in what 
I have called the completed form of his mono- 
logue, with appropriate attendant listeners, 
without soliloquy, narrative, or "message,'* 
and finding its suflBcient end in a marvellous 
group of contrasted personalities. 

"The Ring and the Book" too announces 
with startling clearness a fundamental prin- 
ciple of Browning's art to which I have hither- 
to paid too little attention. It is the principle 
of "the point of view," and with it his special 
type of poetry is inherently connected. We 
know how insistently personal that poetry 
is. Each man is unique; his nature, nurture, 
and circumstance differing in some respects 



308 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

from that of his neighbor. Accordingly the 
pov,^ers by which we apprehend truth will 
vary, and what is true for one of us will not 
be true for another. There is no standard set 
of powers by reference to which absolute 
truth may be known. Reality is always rela- 
tive. Each of us brings with him a point of 
view, from which he cannot escape. The doc- 
trine of the point of view accordingly underlies 
all that Browning writes. Something per- 
sonal is always added to reality as a formative 
factor whenever we approach a fact. In "The 
Ring and the Book" what we call the same 
story is told by nine different people, and to 
the last we do not know — nor very much 
care — what the facts in themselves may 
really be. We only know how they look from 
these several points of view. The wise man 
then will fix his attention rather on the be- 
holder than on the things alleged to be beheld. 
"There's nothing either good or bad but 
thinking makes it so," Hamlet says. To com- 
prehend a human soul, Browning has told us, 
is the one thing in the world deserving study. 
The great service of the poets lies in their 
teaching us to look at the world from other 
points of view than our own. 



ROBERT BROWNING 309 

Now "The Ring and the Book" is a veri- 
table school for this sort of instruction, and 
that its teachings may impress us the more, 
they are conveyed in triadic form. Three 
groups, with three contrasted members in 
each, report to us what they know, and there- 
fore what they are. A ghastly murder occurred 
at Rome in 1679. Giuseppe Caponsacchi, a 
priest, ran away from Arezzo to Rome with 
Pompilia, the girl-wife of Guido Franceschini, 
a brutal and impoverished noble. Guido pur- 
sued the fugitives and subsequently killed 
Pompilia and her reputed parents, he himself 
being finally executed. Each of these three 
chief actors in the affair tells his story, no two 
alike. But the people of Rome are likewise 
interested, one part of them taking the wife's 
side, one the husband's; and besides these, 
those who, putting away all sentiment, see 
right on each side and pride themselves on 
judging all by pure intellect. Each one of 
this group not involved in the affair lets us 
learn how his mind has been affected. Then 
appears the legal group, the advocate of each 
party with the Pope, the judge of all. At the 
very last, and after Guido is condemned and is 
about to pass from his prison to go to the scaf- 



310 FORMATIVE TYPES IN ENGLISH POETRY 

fold, he is allowed to speak once more, and 
then discloses a side of himself and his story 
unlike what was heard before. 

Here then a story is told ten times without 
ever failing in interest. This is because by 
Browning's "new method" the event is trans- 
fused through personalities which it illumi- 
nates in every part. Where else outside Shak- 
spere has individual experience been painted 
on such a scale? The long struggle of Roman- 
ticism, moving in the direction of Browning's 
new type and new method, culminates in this 
masterpiece and shows itself capable of pro- 
digious effects. No wonder the coming of 
something so huge created disturbance in the 
public mind. People must be either violently 
repelled or ardently attracted by this unflinch- 
ing poet of the personal life. We may say that 
Tennyson and Browning summarize the ima- 
ginative life of their century. Browning shows 
the beginning of that Naturalism which 
henceforth, for good or ill, was to flood our 
poetry. Tennyson sings regretfully the shim- 
mering charm, the ideal beauty, the refine- 
ment, the wistfulness, which were soon to pass 
away. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 

The two volumes of "Selections" from Browning, 
drawn up by himself (Macmillan), seems to me judicious, 
if somewhat too full. The classified lists of his more not- 
able poems, already given in the text, sufficiently indicate 
my preferences and need not be repeated here. Any one 
undertaking "The Ring and the Book" for the first time 
should read Browning's Introduction, especially the last 
half, and either the speech of Caponsacchi or of Pompilia. 



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